Recordpub.com - Midway Drive-In a unique treat One of 32 outdoor movie theaters still in Ohio

photograph by michael k. dakota/ 050209. Midway Drive In

By Matt Fredmonsky

Record-Courier staff writer

Fresh popcorn is popping. Homemade coney sauce is cooking. And the projectors are rolling.

It’s a spring Saturday night, and the Midway Drive-In is open for business.

At $16 per car load, between 500 and 550 cars can park alongside each other to watch a mix of films on two screens — both 40- feet by 80-feet — each lit up by a single, 4,500 watt projection bulb.

The Midway Drive-In, located on S.R. 59 in Ravenna Township — midway between Ravenna and Kent — is an iconic piece of Americana, as it is one of 32 drive-in movie theaters still working in Ohio and one of the 405 reportedly still open nationwide as of 2007, according to the Web site Drive-Ins.com.

Mike Marxen runs “The Midway Twin” for owner John Knepp, who also owns the Mayfield Road Drive-In in Chardon.

Marxen said the drive-in earns little cash on admissions because of rising film rates out of Hollywood, and the usual business expenses such as labor, utility rates and property taxes continue to increase.

“We just try to stay one step ahead of what’s going on so we can be here year to year,” Marxen said. “We make our money on concessions.”

Two years ago, Knepp remodeled the theater’s concession stand. An expanded menu includes his personal coney sauce recipe. Knepp makes the sweet chili sauce each weekend and features it on the “sloppy menu” of hot dogs, chili fries and nachos.

But it’s the s’mores baked on site that really draw a crowd, Marxen said.

“You get that aroma of those things baking in the concession stand, and all it takes is one order and you’ve got 10,” he said.

The drive-in was built in 1955 on a little more than 12 acres. The theater has opened every spring since. Jack Vogel built the original screen tower, which was destroyed in a storm in December 2000. The second screen was added in the 1980s.

Drive-in theaters rose in popularity from the mid 1940s to the end of the 1950s. The drive-in peeked in 1958 with 4,063 open across the country. Since then their numbers have decreased sharply each decade.

In 1958, Ohio had 196 working drive-ins. Today, 32 are open statewide.

Knepp said some day he expects drive-in theaters to disappear from the landscape altogether.

“Drive-ins are still a dinosaur,” Knepp said. “And as expenses go up, it’s harder and harder to keep a seasonal business like a drive-in afloat.”

However, the rate of disappearing drive-ins seems to have leveled off in the current decade — 447 were open nationwide in 1999 and 405 were still reportedly open in 2007.

Jennifer Scherer Janisch, who maintains Drive-Ins.com, said the decline seems to have leveled off.

“I think drive-ins became scarce enough people realized they might disappear all together and made a little extra effort to seek them out,” she said. “And I think the ones that are left in most cases are the ones that have either a unique aspect to it, or just do a really good job with their showmanship.”

Marxen believes a family looking to enjoy the outdoors, tasty snacks and quality entertainment will always be drawn to the drive-in and its guaranteed double features.

Knepp agreed and added Midway caters to families with few R-rated films and the occasional visiting masked superhero for big hits, such as the recently released “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” which hit the mammoth screens this month.

“It’s still a tremendous deal for a family to come out and be entertained for four or five hours,” Knepp said. “Where else are you going to do that?”