Pleasant Valley Drive-In (Closed)

Pleasant Valley Drive Right On By
Pleasant Valley Drive-In, Barkhamsted
October 2024

The drive-in closed in 2022.

I listed Connecticut’s few drive-ins years ago. This was the one that most interested me simply because it’s nowhere near any sort of population center. It’s in Pleasant Valley.

Where’s Pleasant Valley?

Pleasant Valley is a very small section of Barkhamsted. Now, I realize most of you don’t know where that is either but that should be enough to tell you it is a sparsely populated town. But they had a drive-in movie theater here since 1947.

And I held out hope through the pandemic and beyond that it would reopen, but approaching 2025 as I write this, I’m calling it kaput forever.

How it came to close is an exceptionally confusing story that mostly involves planning and zoning, town ordinances, money, property ownership disagreements, and more money. When you have all that going on, you have very little hope of moving forward in any meaningful way.

If I’m wrong, good! I’ll happily remove this page and struggle through some bad movie with bad sound and report back here.

The situation seems pretty frustrating for those involved. It seems to come down to the theater being on three acres on a much larger lot. When that larger lot was sold, the new owners put in some new demands for the theater’s operation.

The last owner who showed movies here was Donna McGrane. She owned and operated the theater since the mid-90’s and was responsible for keeping it afloat during the pandemic and for upgrading the projector and the snack bar roof among other things.

The new owner of the site is Pleasant Valley Properties LLC, with Anna Smolen of Avon, [and some other guys] listed as the principles.

In a previous interview and in proceedings before town boards, Smolen has claimed that the drive-in business was part of the property purchase.

But Smolen and McGrane disagree on what has transpired since the sale and in the years that the drive-in has been shuttered.

In an interview with Hearst Connecticut Media, McGrane explained that she owned and operated the business. She said she leased 3 acres of the property, as well as the big screen, some outbuildings and a snack bar, and said the movie projection equipment belongs to her. Until 2022, she said she paid rent to the former property owners, the Jones family.

For her part, McGrane said that any plans she made with Smolen to continue running the drive-in on the property were no longer in place.

Records in Barkhamsted Town Hall confirm that McGrane was the drive-in’s owner; a record of the business is filed with the Secretary of the State’s Office, Town Clerk Holly Krouse said.

Town Hall records also confirm that Pleasant Valley Properties purchased the 52 acres in December 2022, for $800,000.

In 2023, Smolen said she planned to upgrade the snack bar, provide indoor seating and add other amenities at the drive-in theater. The owners also said they wanted to host events on the property, such as fundraisers or craft shows, and wanted the facility to be open all year. The plans were made with the assumption that the drive-in business was part of their 2022 purchase, McGrane said.

It gets messier. The family that owned the land never told the theater owner they were selling. After lease terms with the new owners were determined to be untenable, McGrane took her stuff and told her Facebook followers the drive-in was no more.

McGrane says an attorney advised her and family members to remove their property from the drive-in, including the new $125,000 digital projector.

“I own it,” McGrane said. “It was my business for 27 years. I went to Town Hall and told them I was taking what belonged to the drive-in, which belongs to me as the owner. The new owners own the property. They do not own the drive-in.”

On top of all of that, the town seems to be giving the new owners the run-around. The drive-in is grandfathered in as far as zoning goes, but anything else surrounding its three acres isn’t. And the new owners seem to enjoy pushing Barkhamsted as much as possible, using the land for unallowable things like truck storage and such.

Without equipment, town support, or really much public outcry from what I gather, I very much doubt this place will show another movie. The large wooden screen structure still stands, as does the dilapidated entrance booth and snack bar… barely. The roadside sign is gone and the parking area is overgrown and chunked up.

This page’s purpose isn’t to disparage anyone in particular. I’ve just had it as a placeholder for many years and with drive-ins becoming so rare, I felt it worthy of inclusion on CTMQ. This place could host 250 cars

Plus, it’s interesting that Pleasant Valley shuttered not because of lack of interest, but rather because of ownership changes, town ordinances, perhaps some miscommunication, and cross purposes.

It’s a shame. Pleasant Valley section of Barkhamsted is a throwback itself… just look at the post office here! And with minimal light pollution and surrounded by forest and river, I imagine seeing a movie here could be magical.

Unfortunately, I think it would take something literally magical to bring it back someday.