WHITEHALL — The Cruz In parade will return to the White Lake area calendar next Friday, July 25 after last year's parade did not take place due to public safety concerns.
Complaints of burnouts in the 2023 parade damaging city streets led to the 2024 event instead taking place as a car show in downtown Montague. However, a new committee has taken over management of the event and is ready to bring the parade back in full.
The parade will take place an hour earlier than it had through 2023, starting at 6 p.m. As in those prior years, drivers will travel from Whitehall into Montague and park throughout the downtown Montague area to show off their classic cars to attendees.
Montague city manager Jeff Auch said the parade's cancellation in 2024, and resulting public feedback largely in favor of bringing it back, helped lead to community members approaching the cities to pitch forming a new committee. The previous committee, composed largely of community members at first, had over time morphed into one run in large part by Montague and Whitehall city staff and police departments.
"As municipalities, we can sometimes get into a rut of doing things like they've always been done, so a new perspective is good," Auch said. "That's where it (led to) having another group organize the event and have the cities do what they're best at...The officers could spend more time monitoring the parade rather than parking cars and doing other stuff.
"We don't have to figure out the minutiae of coordinating vendors and ordering t-shirts and signs and all that stuff. We can look more at the management of the parade, making sure it's a safe parade, getting the permits. The fact that someone else is organizing it is a good thing."
Doug Boardwell, part of that new committee, spoke at the July 8 Whitehall city council meeting about the parade and received approval from the council to close a portion of Hanson Street, designating it as the only part of the parade in which participants are allowed to do burnouts. That change is chief among the tweaks the committee, which has met regularly for months to organize Cruz In 2025, believe will restore the event to its traditional high point of White Lake summers.
"The way we proposed it was, we had a group of like-minded car enthusiasts and we wanted to take it over and revamp it," Boardwell said of how the committee pitched itself to the two cities. "They were open for that discussion. We had to hear the police chiefs out because their concerns were the burnouts and the what-ifs, and what-could-happens."
Taking the finances of the event off the city's plate, Boardwell said, was also a selling point that led to the new committee being given the cities' blessing.
"Not only are we staying true to what they wanted to see out of the event, we're also taking the financial liability away from the cities," Boardwell said. "It was a budgeted event by the cities. I don't remember what the number was...but it was an expense for them."
Though Cruz In hasn't yet occurred, public feedback so far indicates the committee's hopes have been well-founded; two Facebook posts earlier this month announcing the parade's return and outlining the rules for participation each drew over 200 likes, and Boardwell said more than 10 times that many viewed the posts.
Boardwell said he's received positive feedback from Fetch Brewing and Hanson Hill Waterfront Grill regarding the designated burnout lane. The lane will be in front of the North Mears Promenade and will cost $20 for drivers to participate in. Burnout lane participants will then merge back into the parade where Hanson intersects with Colby Street, just prior to the causeway leading to Montague.
That move is one revenue source the committee is utilizing to pay for the event. It is also instituting a registration fee to drive in the parade, a Cruz In first, though it believes the $10 charge is reasonable.
"We'll have t-shirt sales and some donations, and sponsors from our area businesses are playing a big role in that," Boardwell said. "Some of the expenses that people may not think about are the porta-johns, the flyers, all the registration forms, (and) the overtime we have to pay the police officers. A lot of those things add up. We did have to look for some ways to generate some income."
As much because of limited parking in downtown Montague as anything else, the Cruz In parade will be limited to cars of model years 1985 or older. A live music performance by Dave Burel in downtown Montague will also provide entertainment, and North Grove Brewers will also host a music performance by the band Big Cadillac.
Bringing back the parade is not the final step the committee has in mind for Cruz In; Boardwell said it's looking at several possibilities to further liven up the event in coming years. He specifically mentioned getting food trucks to come to the Funnell Field staging area where the cars and drivers will assemble, saying it will give drivers who are hurriedly leaving work in order to get their car ready for the parade an easier way to grab a meal beforehand.
Auch added other ideas the committee broached as potential tweaks, including having the parade continue further north in Montague in future years and maybe even making Cruz In a multi-day affair.
For now, though, the area is simply ready to welcome back the Cruz In parade.
"There's more areas for improvement," Boardwell said. "We have some ideas for next year and some more things up our sleeve...As of right now, we're just excited it's back. Hopefully it goes off with no hitches."
