The OLG Classic Car Cruise element of RetroFest will change this year.
Organizers of the annual weekend, which brings hundreds of classic cars into Chatham’s downtown and thousands of people, said the construction delays on the Fifth Street Bridge are part of the problem that forced a route change.
In the past, the Friday evening cruise would begin at the John D. Bradley Centre and head out along the Thames River to Prairie Siding, before crossing the river and coming back into the downtown core, where the classic cars would loop around through the core.
This year, according to Historic Downtown BIA staffer Connie Beneteau, the cruise will once again begin at the Bradley Centre, but will now head down Bloomfield Road and along Eighth Line into North Buxton. It will proceed south into South Buxton before heading along Middle Line back to Bloomfield, where the cruise will proceed north to Sixth Line, onto Howard Road, then to Indian Creek Road, to Lacroix Street, onto Wellington, and into the downtown core.
The route will avoid the Third Street Bridge, at the request of the police and municipal engineering department, Beneteau said.
“We’d just bottleneck there anyway,” she said of the bridge.
As for heading southwest through North and South Buxton rather than west along the river, Beneteau said that was at the request of the municipal departments. While the Kent Historic Auto Club preferred the previous route, it agreed to the change.
The new route is about 10 kilometres longer than the old one as well, Beneteau said.
This could spark an annual shifting of the cruise route, she added, to keep it fresh.
The cruise takes place the evening of May 25 and the downtown display of vehicles for RetroFest takes place the next day.
