by business editor Trevor Sturgess

Kent County Agricultural Society, organiser of this week’s Kent Show, is pressing ahead with a £7 million building revamp after scaling down plans for an Olympic equine centre.

Society chiefs had hoped to create a £27m complex at the Detling showground designed to attract showjumping teams in 2012.

However, the plan was fiercely opposed by members who thought it too ambitious and financially risky, and provoked a leadership contest. There were also planning issues over a major project in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

Economic reality has also forced the society to re-think its strategy and adopt a more modest proposal to refurbish the Kent Pavilion. But it will still create one of the largest exhibition spaces in the county. Hadlow College has teamed up with the society to add a Centre of Rural Excellence to the pavilion.

KCAS chairman George Jessel said he was disappointed that the original plan could not now go ahead. If he had been able to push it through 18 months again, it might have been possible.

But the economic downturn had made it more difficult to obtain the necessary funding, and he had been unable to secure promises from any Olympic teams to use the proposed equine centre as a training camp.

"I am having to be realistic in the real world," Mr Jesssel said. "In 2009 I can’t quite pull off a big multi-million pound scheme but what I can pull off is a scaled-down version that gives us a jump-off to build something bigger in the future."

He added that the showground buildings were "creaking" and had to be upgraded if the showground was not to fall behind competitors. "I want to get on and get something done."

KCAS hopes to raise £1m from members towards the project that could begin work after next year’s Kent Show, with the enlarged Pavilion opened shortly after the 2011 show.