High River’s future drive-in theatre the Sunset Drive-In is finally beginning their screen construction.
Rotary Car Club Member and one operators behind the drive in, Jeff Langford, says they finished up the projector building and were just waiting on the approval for the screen.
“It’s going well, the Town’s been really supportive of what we’ve been doing, the bigger hurdle was getting our engineering designs done for our screen because it is a thick screen now. That’s done and approved now so we have an engineers stamps for the big screen and other than that we are moving right along here, we’re just waiting for some small approvals from the Town, then construction is starting here shortly.”
The screen has been designed as a sturdy but still semi-movable stack of sea-cans to make sure in the future if the drive-in needs to be moved, it can be but the screen can still withstand the winds that come through the area.
“We’ve got an approved stacked sea-can approach, we have to keep everyone happy by keeping it semi-movable for if we had to move to a new location down the road, Sea-cans work really well cause you can stack them high, they’ll be welded, We are gonna make them presentable and they have to be able to withstand the winds down by the AG grounds and that whole area of town.”
Langford says now that the screen is approved they can get going on building it up.
The drive-in project has been in the works for a while and Langford says the community has been very supportive of the project particularly High River Town Council.
“A lot of support from local businesses, and of course the community and the town, I don’t think we could have done it without having the council we have right now with the town. Everyone should really appreciate the hard work being done, and they are excited about it, the people that are actually in the town working on this project with us want to see this happen and it will be a great thing for High River.”
Langford says the project is starting to come together now but they’re still looking for support from the community for the project saying they’ll take whatever help they can get.
“We’re gonna put some work crews together while still maintaining social distancing, We’ve got fencing to put up and some buildings to put up, donations from trades would be grade, we need plumbing to get the washrooms in place, they won’t be open right away but we want to get them done so if any trades that are wanting to donate some time or materials or any businesses that want to donate materials would help us get to where we want to be.”
The drive-in is still planning for a July opening should everything go to plan.
The community has been very supportive of the project particularly High River Town Council.
– Jeff Langford
