Thursday, April 17, 2008
Cruise events to rev up Motor City
Nine-day celebration of cars adds numerous festivities in Detroit
Catherine Jun / The Detroit News

DETROIT -- Welcome to the party, Detroit.

The Woodward Dream Cruise officially expanded its suburban reach into the big city on Wednesday, when organizers revealed the details of the Cruisin' MotorCities Summer Festival, a nine-day drive-up to the Dream Cruise that will feature car shows, Model T rides, live music, food and, yes, more cruising, with Detroit-centric events extending from the Michigan State Fairgrounds to Campus Martius, Belle Isle and beyond.

The festival will begin Aug. 8 with a lowriders custom car show and roll right into the Cruise on Aug. 16, when GM celebrates its 100th birthday with 100 cars leaving the RenCen to join up with the Cruise in Ferndale, north of Eight Mile.

The festival, while not adding Detroit as an official Dream Cruise city, will finally link it to the vastly popular but utterly suburban Dream Cruise, which draws 1.2 million spectators and 40,000 classic cars to Oakland County to celebrate the automotive nostalgia of the 1950s and '60s.

The slate of events, organized with the help of Chris Ilitch of Ilitch Holdings Inc. and a federally funded agency, indicates that though official Woodward Dream Cruise organizers are not interested in extending the official cruise route south of Eight Mile, the Motor City this year will be a major epicenter for the first time in the annual August phenomenon.
'Biggest presence' for Detroit

"This is the biggest presence Detroit has had during Cruise week, absolutely," said Greg Rassel, former president of Woodward Dream Cruise Inc. and now Royal Oak's representative on its board.

The efforts are being spearheaded by MotorCities National Heritage Area, a federally funded organization affiliated with the National Park Service that has been relatively unknown until recently. The office, in the Renaissance Center, approached Dream Cruise organizers last year with an offer to expand the Cruise and better market it as a tourist attraction. So far, it appears set to do just that.

"We have struck a positive chord," said Gary Familian, executive director of MotorCities.

Most events are tapping their own sponsors for funding, and Familian is soliciting corporate dollars for those co-organized with the Dream Cruise. He said the names of sponsors would be revealed at a later date.
Details discussed

Organizers are working with city officials on details such as cleaning up and policing and are soliciting corporate sponsors to pay for setup costs. Typically, the nine communities along Woodward pay overtime hours incurred by their police and public works departments, which for larger communities like Royal Oak can top $100,000.

The events will be advertised along with the Belle Isle Grand Prix and the Meadow Brook Concours d'Elegance in hotel magazines in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, Familian said.

Several events are being organized with the help of the Detroit Metro Convention and Visitors Bureau. One event includes a charity gala set to chamber music in the foyer of the Detroit Opera House. Proceeds will benefit the Detroit River Conservancy.

Organizers are cross-marketing the Cruise, combining forces with General Motors Corp., which is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year and will host a car show in the Renaissance Center and send a 100-car caravan onto Woodward on the day of the Cruise.

"I'm excited about the potential for this new festival and believe it can be the genesis of something really big as it evolves," Ilitch said in a statement.

"To me, it's Detroit's Mardi Gras," said Rebecca Hammond, a 50-year-old Dream Cruise fan from Ferndale. "It always seemed a shame that it stopped at Eight Mile."

The question of whether to extend the official route -- now 16 miles from Ferndale to Pontiac -- to Detroit was raised and quashed last year, when Dream Cruise board members adopted a long-term strategic plan that didn't include changing the route.

Organizers have insisted that it wasn't about excluding Detroit, but about maintaining the historical route of the cruise within Oakland County.
Focusing on history

"There was no particular inclusion or exclusion," said Dale Dawkins, president of the board. "I really feel strongly that we need to continue to focus on that specific history, and that is from Eight Mile to Pontiac."

Until this year, the Cruise has for the most part been organized by the nine Oakland County communities, along with the help of an outside public relations firm, this year Tanner Friedman. In recent years, organizers had faced leveling sponsorship dollars and rising costs to run the event.

"I have to believe in my own mind that as we are able to give more to the communities ... that will be attractive to sponsors," Dawkins said .