LEAVING TOWN

Car shows exiting downtown for the mall

A decade of tradition will come to an end this spring when the Nostalgia Night car show moves out of downtown Pottstown.

Tony Ziemba Jr., president of the Pottstown Classics Car Club which staged the monthly show during the warmer months, said the cost of doing the show downtown has become too high for the club to afford.

The show will move to a largely unused parking lot behind the Coventry Mall.

The club has always paid for the use of porta-potties and vendors to come to the show, but the borough’s implementation of a $315 fee for each show last year “made us so disgusted. It was the last straw,” Ziemba said.

He said the borough also requested that the club increase its liability coverage from $1

million to $3 million, which would have increased their insurance costs.

Borough Manager Justin Keller said the implementation of the fee last year was to correct an oversight. In other words, the charge should always have been levied.

“Somehow they slipped through the cracks in the past,” he told The Mercury.

Keller said he told the car club they could request that borough council waive the fee.

“I wish they would have reached out to me about this and I would have advised them they could ask council to waive the fee,” Keller said. “Anyone can ask council to waive the fee.”

However, he said, “council has made it very clear, given our financial situation, that they do not want to waive the fees for anything.” The one exception council set is for the Memorial Day Parade.

“We have to cover the costs for the services we provide and we kept costs down by having the street barricades put out during the day Thursday so we did not incur any overtime,” he said.

Ziemba said the club discussed moving the show last year when the fee was imposed “but we tabled it and a couple of the businesses chipped in to cover the fees,” including Christ Episcopal Church.

“They didn’t want to see us go, because they sell food on the sidewalk during the shows,” he said.

“But we’re an aging club and it was getting harder to hang all the ‘No-Parking’ signs and set those barricades up and take them down,” Ziemba said.

Ziemba said the club held a meeting recently and the members voted “in a landslide” to move the show to Coventry Mall, where the cost to the club is only $150 per show.

By contrast, holding the show on High Street meant the club not only had to cover the $315 borough fee, but another $290 for two porta-potties and $310 on top of that for three security workers to man the street closures.

“It was costing us $900 to $950 per show and we were talking about raising the entry fee (for the cars) from $10 to $15,” Ziemba said. “Now we can keep the entry fee at $10 and at the mall its harder for people to try to sneak (their cars) in.”

Because the show will be at the mall this year, portapotties are not necessary because visitors will have access to the mall bathrooms and vendors are also not necessary because visitors can visit the mall’s food court if they’re hungry.

“That means more money for us to put toward the charities we support,” said Ziemba. Those include Means on Wheels, the Police Athletic League, Relay for Life and holidays meals to needy families.

“Our motto is: ‘Serving the community through our hobby,’” Ziemba said.

Each show typically attracts about 200 cars “but we get the most on our first show in May and the last one in September, which is kind of a last hurrah for people to bring their cars out,” he said. “At those shows, we get about 300.”

“We would like to thank Pottstown and the borough council for the good years that we had in downtown Pottstown,” Ziemba wrote on the club’s Facebook page where the announcement was first made.

“We’re sorry to see them go,” Keller said. “But we have to prioritize getting our finances in order,” he said in reference to the outside consultant now undertaking a financial and operation audit of the borough in the wake of tax hikes of 12 percent and 9.5 percent.

“Once we get that in order, we hope to attract more events to the downtown,” Keller said.

MEDIA NEWS GROUP FILE PHOTO People flock to High Street every year for the first nostalgia night car show sponsored by the Pottstown Classic Car Club. It will be held this Saturday from 5 to 9 p.m.

TOM KELLY III — DIGITAL FIRST MEDIA This 1955 Chevy Bel Air is shown parked outside the former landmark New York Store in downtown Pottstown during the August “Nostalgia Night” show held by the Pottstown Classics Car Club.

EVAN BRANDT — MEDIANEWS GROUP This rarely used parking lot at the Coventry Mall is where the Pottstown Classics Car Club’s Nostalgia Nights will be held this summer.