This weekend will be the De Anza Drive-In’s curtain call.
The iconic theater at 1401 S. Alvernon Way, where countless Tucsonans have been smuggled and snuggled, will show its last movies Saturday night before it likely becomes yet another commercial center on a busy intersection.
Evergreen Development Co., which has offices in Phoenix and Glendale, Calif., has purchased the roughly 25 acres from the De Anza Land and Leisure Corp. for $2.8 million.
What will replace Tucson’s last drive-in theater remains unclear, although it will almost certainly be some kind of retail complex.
“We really don’t have a plan,” said Gregg Alpert, Evergreen’s managing principal. “We do not have any immediate plans to develop it. We just like the property. Its infill location and heavy traffic count make it an intriguing purchase for us. But we are going to take our time to develop it.”
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Evergreen is known for creating “neighborhood marketplaces” with grocery store anchors. Its projects in the Old Pueblo include Steam Pump Village in Oro Valley, Madera Marketplace in Sahuarita, several Walgreens stores and a grocery store project on the southwest side’s Yaqui reservation.
Los Angeles-based De Anza Land and Leisure Corp. purchased the old drive-in theater in 1977 when it was called the Cactus Drive-In.
Today the theater is in need of numerous costly improvements and the company had to sell it, Teri Oldknow, senior vice president for De Anza Land and Leisure, said in a written statement.
“The closing comes at a critical decision point for the business — in the near future, De Anza Land and Leisure would have to make major capital investments in the infrastructure of the drive-in which was not financially feasible for us,” Oldknow said.
De Anza Land and Leisure has roughly 210 employees and owns drive-ins in California, Utah, Arizona and Georgia. It’s unclear what will happen to the Tucson theater’s employees; Oldknow did not respond to phone and e-mail requests for comment.
Evergreen and De Anza had flirted with a deal in May 2008, but Alpert said it was nixed by market conditions — coupled with the intense public response about the drive-in’s closure. De Anza, which Alpert said has been losing money, approached Evergreen about a new deal earlier this year.
With no plans to immediately develop the site, Evergreen offered De Anza the chance to continue showing movies.
“We gave them the opportunity to stay, and they decided they didn’t want to,” Alpert said. “It’s a money-losing venture for them. They gave it a good run. ... We did not approach them. They came to us.”