ABINGDON, Va. — With renovation underway, the new owners of the landmark Moonlite Drive-In Theatre have big plans.
“It’s challenging for anything to survive as just a drive-in theater, and so we can envision it as so much more,” said Renee Blevins, who, alongside her daughter Rebecca Blevins Crusenberry are the new owners of the Moonlite Drive-in.
“We want to make it different than just going to the movies. We’d like to open hours earlier and have live music from local bands,” Blevins said. “There’s so many things we could do. It just seems like there’s just limitless possibilities.”
The Moonlite Drive-In, which is located at 17555 Lee Hwy near Abingdon, was last operational back in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic when the Barter Theatre leased it for their summer and fall productions that year.
It first opened in 1949 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2007.
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Blevins recalled going to the Moonlite to watch movies with her family as a child and highlighted that she and her family were part of the original attempt to keep the Moonlite theater operational back in 2016.
“I lived, I think, maybe four miles from the Moonlite,” Blevins said. “I remember going to watch ‘The Way We Were.’ I don’t know why that movie sticks out in my mind. I guess it’s because I was probably too young to really be watching it.”
“We had been involved back in the fall of 2016, trying to help William Booker be able to open again because he had to close it back in 2013,” Blevins added.
Renovations at the Moonlite began the moment the Blevins put ink to paper.
“When we saw that it went back in the market, it just seemed like the right time for us to make that move,” Blevins said. “It’s in really bad shape.”
Blevins emphasized that everything from the snack bar to the offices and the screen has to be repaired or replaced due to a lack of maintenance over the past few years.
“The office area under the screen has got to be completely done, and the screen itself has to be scraped, repaired, and repainted,” Blevins said. “The snack bar has to be completely redone, and we would like to decorate it like a retro 50s diner.”
With all these necessary reparations going on, Blevins explains that it will take some time for them to open.
“It’s going to take a long time. We’re hoping that by the end of the summer, maybe this fall, we will be able to do a grand opening,” Belvins said. “If we don’t get it open by the fall then we’ll probably have to wait until next April.”