Is Old Works a sandy site with little to no cart traffic? Because those are the only situations where fescue fairways work in North America. Bandon, Sand Valley, Ballyneal, etc.
We would love for fescue to work outside of that narrow band, but it just doesn't. The good news is with the short season up there in Montana it'll probably take 2 years minimum to see much bluegrass. It's very slow to establish.
If the fescue is slow to recover in July, why aerify it at all?
If Wild Horse and Sand Hills gave up on fescue fairways (incidentally for bluegrass), perhaps you should be more open to the change. What would really be clever is bluegrass fairways and fescue approaches, as that's where you can have success in keeping the cart traffic away.
Anyway, I've seen bluegrass fairways play firm as hell, huge bounces with puffs of dust. As with any grass it comes down to how its managed.