The Lowriginal Car Show that had previously been voted down at the Feb. 16 meeting of the Dunkirk Common Council is being considered once more.

Dunkirk will hold a Department of Public Works meeting on Friday at 3 p.m. and one topic of discussion will be the show planned for July with a few of its members present. “As far as the Lakeshore Street Rod club that’s been there over 10 years, they treat that park with respect. They leave it the way they came in. It’s a family function. A lot of people enjoy it,” Councilman-at-large Paul VanDenVouver said Tuesday. “Unfortunately last year we ended up getting burned by a couple car clubs that were down at the point.”

According to VanDenVouver, these clubs took it upon themselves to cut chains to garbage cans and picnic tables to move them around. He said they also wrecked tables and grills, trashed the new restrooms and defecated in paper plates that had to be cleaned by city workers the next morning.

“It wasn’t about revving their engines. It was about peeling out,” he said. “They had music contests to see whose vehicle was louder, so everybody in the park had to listen to the music including all of the residents around the park, These were the complaints that myself and the council received so we weren’t going to get burned again on this this year. And then there were the phone calls that said they were going under different names, the same car clubs and it’s unfortunate that this car club came up and wanted to rent the point and we had to make a decision.”

VanDenVouver would like groups coming to the city to rent facilities to set up a meeting with the council as he feels it is not the council’s obligation to contact them.

“Hopefully we can sit down and we’re going to meet a couple of the individuals,” VanDenVouver added. “By no means was this done and canceled. They’ve been renting a park in Westfield for seven years. I did reach out to the mayor in Westfield, who’s a friend of mine and he has said he’s had no problems with this group for the last seven years. So maybe we can sit down and talk to them and revisit this and come up with some kind of solution.”

Members of the Lowriginal Car Club were upset their show proposed for Point Gratiot in the city of Dunkirk was nixed last month by the Common Council.

“They’re comparing us to other car clubs, because those clubs keep changing names,” member Joe Colon told the OBSERVER recently. “We’ve had the same name for the past seven years. We have had a show every year since 2016 in Westfield. We want to bring it down here because it’s a bigger park and we’re running out of space over there.”

According to Colon, in 2019 the show brought in 562 cars and it practically doubles in size every year, so the space is desperately needed. “We want to show everybody what we’re about. Yes we’re a car show and a car club, but we want to become more, we want to make it a community thing,” Colon added. “It was kind of a slap in the face, because they didn’t give us an explanation. They didn’t even let us explain ourselves to them, they just saw ‘car show’ and they denied us. Instead of saying ‘no,’ they could have tabled it and talked to us first.”