The Southington Drive-In, Now a Nonprofit, Launches New Season
- Philip Thibodeau
- 2 days ago
- 7 min read
There are only two places in Connecticut where you can watch a Hollywood release on a summer evening from a vehicle full of family and friends. One is the Mansfield Drive-In in Mansfield. The other is Southington’s own drive-in movie theater on 995 Meriden-Waterbury Turnpike, which will be kicking off its 2026 season this Saturday.
The Southington Drive-In, which opened 71 years ago, was the brainstorm of a Greek-immigrant named Peter Perakos. For decades the theater, which originally had two screens, was in regular operation. Yet with the rise of home video options business declined, and in 2002 the Perakos family made the decision to shut it down.
Two years later, the town acquired the property, and in 2010 Dawn Miceli and Mike Riccio led an effort to resurrect it, forming the Southington Drive-In Committee. The idea was to have the town run the venue with the help of local civic groups that would staff events and take a cut of any subsequent profits. Earlier this year the Committee, which now consists of Miceli, Dave Zoni, and Mike Fasulo, was spun off from the town and incorporated as a non-profit.
The Outsider recently spoke with Miceli to learn what it takes to keep an old-fashioned institution like the Drive-In going in an age of streaming video and smartphones. The transcript of our interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
*****
How does each year's line-up get decided?
We pick and choose. We make notes throughout the winter season on what new family movies have come out. Also, once we get into the new year, we look to see what classic movies are having anniversaries. That’s why we’re having movies like Top Gun and Ferris Bueller this year, because both are celebrating anniversaries.
We can’t afford first-run movies because the fees are astronomical. However, a movie that has come out even a month or two earlier we can show during the summer season. We have five or six this year that were released over the winter or just this spring. We’re excited about that. We’re trying to add more each year.
A lot of it depends on the studios in Los Angeles. Last year we were not able to open with Jaws, which had been a tradition with us. Our fans were so upset. ‘Why did you do that?’ It was because Jaws was in its 50th anniversary year, and the studio or the producer put a moratorium on showing Jaws during certain months. We deal with that with every movie we show. They all have windows of availability. So we have to plan there.
Most of the line-up consists of family-friendly films. Is there a reason for that?
We get questions like, ‘why don’t you show an R-rated film,’ ‘why don’t you show a horror movie?’ We’ve been doing this now for 17 years. Especially back in the beginning, we tried to show adult-oriented movies. The fact of the matter was that unless it was a family movie, we were not selling out. And basically the people who go to the movies are young families. The problem when we have a low turnout is that we still have to pay the fee to rent the movie, which is upwards of several thousand dollars. We need a big turnout just to break even. And since we are doing this to raise money for the host organizations, we want each week to be a sell-out.
Ordinary indoor movie theaters make a lot of their movie from selling popcorn and soda at the concession stands. Is that a big income stream for you?
We have a couple of things. We have a food truck, and they pay us a fee to be there. We have an ice-cream truck, and they pay us a fee to be there. Then for the concession stand, we’re sellling popcorn. It’s a buck a bag, so it’s a revenue stream, but it’s not a million dollars. We’re trying to make it affordable for the family.
We are cash-only at the concession stand and at the ticket gate because we don’t want to have extraneous fees from credit cards. People sometimes get upset about that, but if we change, we’re not going to be a buck a bag for popcorn and twenty bucks to get in.
How old is the drive-in?
You can look up its history online for all the details, but it was built in the 50’s. The theater had two screens originally. The town took down one when it bought the property. They were smart enough to leave one screen intact, which we have since maintained. They have to be painted with a special paint. The foundation can rust, so that needs to be maintained.
What is the projection equipment like?
It’s all digital, although we use several projectors to get the resolution and the size that we need on the screen. We have a projectionist who handles that for us.
Who else is working there besides you, Dave Zoni, and Mike Fasulo?
Well the three of us are volunteers, we don’t get paid. Our projectionist is Vinny Morelli and he does get paid. We have a manager and he gets paid. That’s Kyle Ritondo. He works with the volunteers in the host groups each week. He stays until the end of the movie to jump cars if anyone’s battery has died, and he picks up trash from the trash barrels.
The other person we hire is Eric Korp. Eric like Kyle is a physical education teacher in the Southington School System. We have him come for the real children’s movies. He provides free family activities in the multipurpose field for the kids. Back in the day when you would go with your parents to the drive-in, you would swing on the swings that used to be underneath the screen. That small playground is no longer there. Eric plays capture the flag and brings his bubble machine and does all kinds of fun things and has the kids run around in the field before the show.
Those are the paid staff. The three of us, Dave, Mike, and I, are there every Saturday night from May 30th through September of this year. We man the concession stand at the start of the movie and for the first half hour, but we generally don’t stay until the end.
The Drive-In became independent of the town this year. Can you tell us about that?
We are now our own nonprofit LLC with contracts in place with the town that say that all monies are shared with our host organizations. The town came up with a list of mandates for us and we agreed to those. That process is now complete.
We are a separate entity from the town so that we don’t have to utilize any funding from them. We’ve always wanted to be as indepenedent as possible and not cost town residents any tax dollars, if possible. That being said, even when we were with the town, town services were negligible. And we helped maintain that property which the town rents out during the week for parties, drive-in nights, car nights. We maintain the pavilion, power-washing it each year, and we help pay for the electricity down there.
The Drive-In benefits the people who come out to watch the movies, but also the nonprofits that volunteer to staff them. Can you speak more about that?
We’re proud that after seventeen seasons we have now given over a half a million dollars, and are heading towards three quarters of a million dollars, to Southington civic groups and nonprofit organizations. Many have been with us from the start: Southington Rotary, Soutington UNICO, the Mill Foundation, which works with children with cancer, the Lion’s Club, the United Way, Bread for Life. They keep the proceeds in town in order to benefit our residents.
Your group has to have twenty volunteers who get there before the gates open. Some of them are in the field helping to park cars and get them up to the line; we have parking lines so people can see and get out in an orderly manner, and we need to have ingress/egress for emergencies.
Then you also have people at both gates. We have the main gates, the two booths, and we also have a walk-in table on the Rec park side. So the groups need twenty volunteers. They’re there for a couple of hours, and then they come back Sunday morning and help pick up trash that people left in the field.
For that they get a good return. The amount is never guaranteed because it depends on how the season goes. We live in CT, so you can get rain some nights and cancellations. But whatever we make at the end, we divvy up, and everyone gets the same cut. Back in the day they were making $1,500 dollars, and we’re now up to giving out $3,000 for that one night of volunteer work. Frankly we have a wait list of Southington organizations that want to get in. Once organizations get in, they don’t drop out, because they see this is the easiest fundraiser they’ve ever done.
Is the operation sustainable? Can you continue doing this for a long time?
Definitely. A couple of thoughts on that. There’s a reason that for-profit drive-ins went under. It became a thing of the past and people have their huge projection screens at home. But because we’re only open once a week, it’s something special, versus when it was a for-profit business that was open every night and trying to fill the lot. It was a tough business. There’s only two left in Connecticut, and we’re one of them!
People will ask, why can’t you open Friday and Sunday too? We look at the analytics and we know that we have something special. If we were to inundate the market with three movies a week or all week long, I don’t think that would be sustainable. But once a week is sustainable.
******
The Southington Drive-In season kicks off this Saturday, May 30, with the showing of Jaws. Gates open at 6 pm with free family activities on the multipurpose field at 7. All vehicle-loads $20, cash only. Concessions on site or bring your own.
