Drive-in theater planned for Mall of Monroe’s Phoenix Theatres

By Paula Wethington
Monroe News staff reporter
 September 5, 2019

The owners of Phoenix Theatres and Mall of Monroe made the announcement today; it will be Michigan’s largest outdoor movie screen.

The Mall of Monroe is slated to become the home of the largest drive-in movie screen in Michigan, based on an announcement made today by the owners of Phoenix Theatres and Mall of Monroe.

The Starlite Drive-In Movie Experience will be an addition to the 10-screen indoor cinema complex that Phoenix already operates at Mall of Monroe. It will be located along the northwest side of the mall property, along Mall Road and near the current theater complex; in an area that is currently parking spaces.

 “This fits in very well with our redevelopment of Mall of Monroe,” said Joseph Bell, director of corporate communications at Cafaro, the Youngstown, Ohio-based company that owns the mall at 2121 N. Monroe St., Frenchtown Township.

According to the company statement, Starlite is scheduled to open in spring 2020, and the plan has just recently been submitted to Frenchtown Township officials for review. Joe Cork, spokesman for the theater, said they hope to break ground before winter weather settles in.

This “premium drive-in experience” is promised to be Michigan’s first digitally projected outdoor movie screen and will use laser projection technology. The outdoor venue will have handicap-accessible facilities, a full-service concession stand, in-car radio sound broadcast and modern indoor restrooms.

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Phoenix is already a hugely popular entertainment venue, with annual attendance of over 435,000 visitors. The addition of the Encore large-format auditorium in 2017, along with other amenities such as heated recliner seats, has sparked interest from movie fans as far away as Toledo.

“We have had tremendous support from the Monroe area community since we opened our theater in 2007 and it has grown every year,” Cory Jacobson, owner of Phoenix Theatres, said in the statement. “As a former drive-in theater manager in the 1980s, I have such fond memories of working at the outdoor. We actually developed a plan for a new drive-in theatre in the late 1990s and never had the opportunity to build it until now.

A drive-in movie theater is often on the wish list of many local residents when discuss on social media about recreation and entertainment activities in the Monroe area.

Drive-in cinemas had their peak of popularity during the 1950s. The U.S. Census Bureau reported that decade is when nearly 5,000 of the 20,000 movie theaters across the country had outdoor screens. That number once included the Denniston Drive-In on N. Monroe St. in Frenchtown Township, which operated from 1955 through the 1970s.

But these days, the Census Bureau added, only about 300 drive-ins remain in operation around the country. Those remaining sites include the Sundance Kid Drive-In in Oregon, Ohio, near Toledo.

“I’m excited to see how we can contribute to such a nostalgic experience,” Jordan Hohman, general manager of Phoenix Theatres Monroe said in the statement. “The expansion will bring drive-in movies to the modern era and for generations to come.”

Bell said the drive-in project is “just Phase 1 of our redevelopment plan for Mall of Monroe, and we’re sure it will be a huge hit.”