Riverdale UT’s Motor-Vu won’t reopen

Motor-Vu Drive-In marquee, with the box office in the background
Detail of a screen capture from a KUTV news video

After some happy news of late, I’ve got some sad news to report. Riverdale UT’s Motor-Vu Drive-In had been a good example of the resurgence of ozoner interest, but it won’t reopen this year. That’s based on a report from KUTV, Salt Lake City’s News Leader, which said that the Motor-Vu had been rezoned for housing and sold to a developer.

The Motor-Vu started in 1947 with only one screen, and that’s what it had when Brent Coleman’s father had purchased the drive-in in 1979. He added two more screens in the 1980s, and the fourth arrived in 1996. In a 2016 newspaper article, Coleman mentioned that it stayed in the family during the following decades, then owned by him and two brothers. “I love movies, and I’ve never known anything else,” Brent said.

The KUTV article mentioned that it had reached out ” to the owners of Motor-Vu Drive-In but did not hear back.” It’s a darned shame when a perfectly good, well attended drive-in gets wiped out for a housing development. It’s all the more reason to appreciate the ones that are alive while we still have them.