EV road trip postcard: Cherry Bowl drive-in for sale, still going strong

• The Cherry Bowl Drive-In Theatre has been a summer standard near Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore for over 70 years
• The drive-in’s now for sale as its second owner prepares to retire
• The seller wants the eventual buyer to retain the property as an iconic 1950s drive-in

HONOR — The magic starts right around dusk.

Just like every summer weekend since the 1950s, cars line up to get into the Cherry Bowl drive-in. Drivers park next to speaker poles, kids rush over to the snack bar and carloads of people figure out how to get comfortable enough in their seats to make it through the double feature.

Laura Clark won’t have it any other way.

This drive-in is as authentic as it gets, a place where people can count on two movies (with the kid-oriented flick starting first), wholesome fun and a neon-accented snack bar where the original popcorn machine fills cardboard barrel after barrel — topped with real butter — on busy nights.

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Clark said she feels a responsibility to maintain her iconic summer-only theater: “It’s what it was meant to be.”

But Clark’s time there is winding down, now that the 10-acre property is listed for sale.

The listing sent shockwaves through Honor and Benzie County when it went public last spring. Clark was at her winter home in Florida, and missed the public disappointment, often accompanied by fear that this slice of Up North recreation history could close.

That’s not Clark’s plan. She’s working there this season, as she has for 27 years. She’ll keep doing it, alongside a dedicated skeleton staff, until a buyer comes along.

And, she vows, that buyer will keep it a drive-in.

“I’ll do this work, whatever it takes,” Clark said. “The Cherry Bowl will always be open.”

But she also stresses that it’s time for a change. Clark says she’s approaching an age — one she’s not going to say — where it’s time slow down and spend more time with her youngest grandchildren. 

“It’s just getting harder and harder,” she said of the work of maintaining the theater after nearly three decades.

The Cherry Bowl is one of those nostalgic landmarks in small towns,  a place where vacationers going back for generations stopped by, year after year.

The screen, bolstered from the inside by California redwood, went up in 1953, an era when at least 4,000 drive-ins could be found across the United States. 

Today, that number is fewer than 300, according to research by the New York Film Academy. 

“No matter the fate of America’s drive-ins, they will always be a nostalgic and cultural icon,” the organization says. 

At the Cherry Bowl, that’s deliberate. 

“It’s not made to look like the 1950s,” Clark said. “It is the 1950s.”

Clark and her late husband, Harry Clark, bought the drive-in from original owner Jean Griffin in the 1990s after Griffin handpicked the couple to take over her theater. 

The couple shared the work, with Harry’s imagination adding the quirky decor and his gregarious personality resonating across the 10-acre property. Laura says she felt more comfortable in the background, making cotton candy and ensuring a smooth run of double features. 

Harry died in 2012 after an accident, and Laura’s powered through season after season since. By COVID-19, customers were often staying home, hiring was close to impossible and the volume of movies rated from G to PG-13 had dwindled.

Yet the Cherry Bowl is a still place where kids run around on the playground, while their parents may find friends in nearby vehicles. People talk to each other while they stand in line for cotton candy or play miniature golf, before the setting sun triggers the start of the first movie. Birthdays are announced to the crowd — vehicle capacity 275 — as patrons celebrate by honking.

“We’re still family-oriented,” Clark said.

While summer tourists cherish their visits, locals have still more memories, said Hayden Bretzke, a native of Benzie County and listing Realtor with the Jon Zickert Group of Real Estate One. 

“I grew up going to the drive-in and went to birthday parties and different things there,” Bretzke said. “It’s always had a special place in my heart.”

Prospective buyers continue to contact Bretzke about the business, which is listed for $550,000. Showings started in spring and continue into late July.

It remains a viable business, Clark stresses, especially for the right person who could take operations from three days a week back up to the original seven.

“We have a lot of people who have reached out …  with some really good ideas,” Bretzke said. They could include expanding dining options and adding live entertainment or still more activities, like the miniature golf Clark recently revived. 

But the basic commitment remains: Running a drive-in takes some long days, and then nights that can conclude at 3 a.m. when the credits of the second film start scrolling.

Fridays are always busy, since it’s the first night of the weekend and the new batch of weekly films. The movies will already be loaded in the projectors by dusk, but Clark will be there well before the gate opens at 7:30 p.m.

“I’m making cotton candy. I’m making caramel apples,” she said, ticking off some of what needs doing before opening.

Clark said she’s always “enjoyed the challenge” of running a drive-in. That makes selling it an even tougher decision.

But she’s convinced she’s doing the right thing.

“I don’t want to live in the popcorn machine for the rest of my life.”