Final piece of save-the-Starlite deal to go to Wichita City Council on Tuesday
The last piece of the deal to save the Starlite Drive-In is about to fall into place.
The Wichita City Council is poised to lend the operator $200,000 to purchase new digital projectors, the key to reopening the Starlite in late February.
Money to fund the loan will come from a $1 million allocation to the south Wichita council district of Councilman James Clendenin.
Each council member was allocated that amount for district improvements when the council sold the city-owned Hyatt Hotel in 2016.
Clendenin said he has no doubt the five-year, 1 percent interest loan will get paid back. Starlite supporters have already pledged $50,000 to the cause.
“I was getting calls from drive-ins from around the country saying the Starlite is really one of the crown jewel drive-ins in the nation,” he said. “It’s well-kept, well supported, it makes money, it’s clean.”
Clendenin said he’s seen the books and the Starlite has made a yearly profit for decades. Also, the new operator, who has a drive-in in Tulsa, has given the city a personal guarantee to make good on the loan, Clendenin said.
The city loan should end the saga of the Starlite on a high note.
An anonymous buyer has purchased the land the theater occupies and inked a deal to keep the movies rolling with Blake Smith, co-owner of the Admiral Twin Drive-In of Tulsa.
The deal was put together in part by Clendenin and Mayor Jeff Longwell. They brought the city in to try to broker a solution after a public outcry to save the Starlite from the wrecking crew.
Drive-ins are closing all over the country and efforts to preserve them rarely succeed.
Last week, the screen of the defunct Star Vu Drive In in El Dorado toppled over in a strong wind. According to Butler County Watchdog, it had closed five years ago and a fund-raising effort to save it failed.
Clendenin said the problem isn’t that the theaters can’t make money, but that the land they sit on is often “highly developable and very valuable.”
Owners will often cash in that value to support themselves in retirement, he said.
He said the new operators of the Starlite are planning to do more with the property than just show movies after dark.
In daylight hours, it could be used to host swap meets, as many drive-ins do. Another possibility would be afternoon concerts, he said.
The money for new projectors was needed because the previous owner, Chuck Bucinski, had sold that equipment in preparation for a developer razing the theater and building a warehouse at the site.
Bucinski had inherited the theater from its longtime owner, the late Jim Goble, and got City Hall to lift a land-use restriction on the property that would have kept it a drive-in.
But the warehouse developer backed away when the city government and the public weighed in.
The council is expected to approve the projector loan at its meeting at 9 a.m. Tuesday at City Hall, 455 N. Main, Wichita.
“I anticipate this drive-in will be here for decades,” Clendenin said.
This story was originally published December 17, 2018 at 5:00 AM.
