Artist’s rendering from the Coyote web site

Is the Coyote model the future of drive-in theaters? After successful openings in Fort Worth TX and Leeds AL, another Coyote Drive-In is scheduled to open in Lewisville TX before the end of October. The Lewisville Texan Journal ran a story with plenty of the details.

The newest Coyote will open with five screens, and the Texan Journal says it’ll expand to six next year. It will include the Coyote signature touches of an indoor/outdoor restaurant and kids play area. The Lewisville drive-in has been under construction for months, and was originally scheduled to open in July.

Coyote Chief Operating Officer Steve Winn said the special reflective material on the screen will make the movies as easy to watch as indoors. “I think people will find it’s the brightest image they’ve seen on a drive-in ever,” he said.

In February, Lewisville granted over $300,000 in incentives to the Coyote in exchange for allowing the city to use it for special event parking and for hosting an annual city event. “We are thrilled (Coyote) chose Lewisville and think they have a lot to bring to our community,” city spokesman James Kunke said, “and we want to support their success.”

It’s great to see another city recognize the value of a good drive-in. The Lewisville Texan Journal has a lot more on the story, including a fine photo, so go read it!

This is another installment in our occasional series, Things That are Not Drive-Ins. There are so many faux “drive-ins” that pop up every year that it requires something special to make it to a Carload post. The Community First village proposed for Austin TX is that kind of special project.

Mobile Loaves & Fishes has spent over a decade serving Austin’s chronically homeless, finding inexpensive housing and work to get some of them off the streets. Now MLF has announced an ambitious project to build an entire gated community of otherwise homeless residents, as described by KVUE, Austin’s news leader.

KVUE said that Community First would include a drive-in theater. That caused the same double-take I get when I hear requests to donate furniture for the homeless: If some poor soul doesn’t have a roof over his head, where’s he going to put that furniture, and if he’s got a car, why would he drive to a movie? As it turns out, this time KVUE was not completely accurate, probably for the first time in its history. The Community First blueprints clearly show an “outdoor theater,” albeit with spaces for about a dozen cars in a nearby parking lot.

Although the idea of a gated community with a private drive-in is appealing, I have to say that this will not be a true drive-in theater. I do wish its organizers all the best for using private funds to give the homeless a path back to productive society.

WFAA, Dallas’s news leader, provided an excellent report about the funding problems of the Brazos Drive-In in Granbury TX. Not only did WFAA give us this embedded video, the web page with the story also includes some great photos and even linked to the Brazos web site, something that surprisingly few news story pages bother to do. Good job!

According to Brazos owner Jennifer Miller, converting to a digital projection system could cost as much as $100,000. Miller and Brazos manager Brenda Stewart have “teamed up to save the cinema,” WFAA says, though it’s hard to tell exactly what they’re doing to raise money.

The story also says that no matter what happens, the screen and concession building will remain because they “are considered historical.” As Miller put it, “It will look like a drive-in, but there may be 1,000 apartments in the parking lot.”

For the full story and those photos, go check out the story at the WFAA site. I also found another Brazos story from July 2012 by a different WFAA reporter but hosted by KHOU, Houston’s news leader. You might want to go watch that one too.