Family Night Soon to Be Only a Memory : Drive-Ins Going Way of Balconies at Bijou

The big screen is in big trouble in the South Bay.

In San Pedro, bulldozers are leveling the 37-year-old San Pedro Drive-In to make way for a business park and mini-storage facility.

In north Torrance, Pioneer Theatres stopped showing films about a year ago at its drive-in on Redondo Beach Boulevard and has converted the property into a full-time swap meet.

And Pacific Theaters, owner of a drive-in theater on Torrance Boulevard in west Torrance, has considered closing that facility in favor of commercial development.

Several Screens

Only two other drive-in theaters remain in the South Bay--the South Bay 6 Drive-In in Carson and Pacific’s Vermont Drive-In in Gardena. Both apparently are doing well, primarily because they have followed the example of walk-in movie theaters by erecting several screens and offering a variety of films simultaneously.

Increasing land values, the growing popularity of television and videocassette recorders, and changing demographics have combined to bring down drive-in movie screens nationwide. There were 2,218 drive-in movie screens in the country last year, compared to 4,883 in the industry’s peak year of 1958, according to the Theatre Assn. of California.

Until recently, however, drive-in theaters in the South Bay and other parts of Southern California were able to resist the crunch by showing first-run movies year-round, industry officials said. Unlike cold-weather drive-in theaters, which typically have 12-week seasons with mostly second-run movies, local drive-ins have been able to turn a profit with new releases and longer seasons, they said.

But for many theaters, good climate is no longer enough, especially in densely populated areas like the South Bay, where undeveloped land is scarce.

“It is going to be tougher and tougher for drive-ins to survive,” said Doug Hrdlicka, president of Pioneer Theatres, which tried for four years to make its Redondo Beach Boulevard theater profitable before giving up on movies. “If they are located in residential or business neighborhoods, the property is becoming too valuable. They will do better with a commercial strip or condominiums.”

Frans Verschoor, who heads a new Pacific division that is converting theaters to mini-storage operations, said drive-in theater companies in regions like the South Bay are faced with two choices: either build more screens, or stop showing films altogether and develop something else on the property.

“The bottom line is your profit,” Verschoor said. “There are only so many acres available, and you have to determine what is your best profit per square foot per year.”

In the case of the San Pedro Drive-In, which Pacific is developing into a 137,000-square-foot business park and 75,000-square-foot mini-storage facility, the theater chain concluded that a multiple-screen theater would probably fail because of changing demographics and movie-viewing habits in the area.

Spanish-Speaking Population

“The Anglo population had shown less inclination to go to the drive-in in recent years, and there were not enough Spanish-speaking people coming,” Verschoor said. “When the English programs tapered off, we tried Spanish. We had hoped that we would catch a larger portion of the growing Spanish-speaking population, but that was not a big success, either.”

A year ago, Verschoor converted the northwest corner of the 13-acre site into a 17,000-square-foot mini-storage facility to test the local market. He said the facility sold out in less than three months. Encouraged by the response, Pacific moved forward with plans to develop the entire property, making it the second Pacific theater to be converted from movies to storage, he said.

Verschoor said Pacific also considered converting its Torrance Boulevard theater into a mini-storage operation, but discovered the mini-storage market in the beach cities was already saturated. While there are no current plans to convert the theater to another use, Verschoor described the property as “prime land” that will eventually be too valuable for use as a movie theater.

It is unlikely that Pacific would add screens to the one-screen Torrance theater, he said, because the property’s proximity to the beach and its relative inaccessibility to freeways hampers its ability to draw audiences from beyond Torrance and the beach cities.

“When you are very close to the coast, you are limited as far as your population base is concerned,” he said. “We added screens to the Winnetka Drive-In in the San Fernando Valley, but there you are surrounded by miles and miles of population.”

Becoming Obsolete

Jay Swerdlow, assistant to Pacific’s general manager, said the company has no immediate plans to abandon its theater on Torrance Boulevard, but he acknowledged that single-screen theaters are fast becoming obsolete.

“It is a sign of Southern California, if the not the country, of escalating real estate values,” he said. “For most drive-ins, certainly the single-screen drive-ins, the land has become more valuable than a drive-in theater warrants.”

Faced with sluggish sales, the theater chain converted its single-screen theater on Vermont Avenue in Gardena into a three-screen drive-in about 10 years ago, Swerdlow said. The theater, which is near the intersection of the Harbor and San Diego freeways, has been “very successful,” in large part because it can draw audiences from throughout Los Angeles, he said.

Some theaters, such as the Roadium on Redondo Beach Boulevard, turned to flea markets on weekends to supplement their income when theater revenues began to fall. In the case of the Roadium, the flea market became so successful it helped push the company out of the theater business.

Best Use for Property

“We found out that an open-air market is the highest and best use for this property right now,” said Hrdlicka, president of Pioneer Theatres. “We are now open seven days a week, and we do not believe a strip mall, condominiums or any other development would generate the revenue . . . that the flea market does.”

Hrdlicka said Pioneer tried everything--including hiring Pacific to run the movie operations for three years--to salvage the drive-in theater, but found it was a losing cause.

“It is difficult for a small drive-in movie to make it today,” he said. “Near the end, I would come by here at night, and some nights there would be three or four cars.”

Yet even with the recent--and contemplated--closures of drive-in theaters in the South Bay, word comes from the Theatre Assn. of California, a trade association of more than 2,000 walk-in and drive-in theaters throughout the state, that drive-in theaters are here to stay.

Many Are Thriving

Robert W. Selig, a former Pacific executive who is president of the association, said that the number of failing drive-ins pales in comparison to those that are thriving. While the trend may be toward fewer drive-in theaters in areas where real estate prices are escalating, those that remain are growing, adding new screens and attracting new audiences, he said. Larger, more modern theaters--such as a 16-screen drive-in theater in San Jose--are the way of the future, he said.

“Drive-ins generally are doing very, very well,” he said. “People still like going to them.”

Selig said a private study commissioned by Pacific several years ago revealed that 72% of patrons at drive-in theaters in the Los Angeles area are young couples with small children--and tight budgets.

“It’s no longer the neckers,” he said. “Where else can you take the family out for eight or nine bucks?”