“I had heard through the grapevine that The Cool City Car Show and Cruze wasn’t going to happen this year. Organizing events is hard work! It takes a lot of time to put an event together, find volunteers, and everything you need to host an event like. So Jay Samborn and I talked to Mike Thelen about the Midland Street Merchants organizing the event.
For those that may not be aware, the Midland Street Merchants is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization of all the bar owners down here. Jay Samborn is the president, I'm the vice president and Jay’s fiancé is the treasurer. We’re the group that brought back Rib Fest, and eventually we want to be responsible for more improvements down.
Mike, Jay, and I came to an agreement that he would help us out for the first year, along with his board and core volunteers to back us up.
We want to model the Cool City model after something like the car show in Frankenmuth, held on the weekend after Labor Day. It's the biggest car show in Michigan. They brag and beat their chests every year about how they bring in over 100,000 people…and they do! It's huge. If you walked the whole thing, you would have to walk five miles to see it all. I want to try to build our car show into something like that. We want to make the show the center of multiple days of events that happen around it, and maybe within five years when we grow a little bit and draw 20,000 to 30,000 people. We want to get everybody involved and turn it into an event that can really celebrate Bay City.”
– Greg Kimbrue, Cool City Car Show and Cruze
