Gina and Dan Beckley pose Tuesday at the Van Buren Drive In, which they have up and running after a 30-year hiatus. Photo by M.J. Stafford

DUNKIRK — It took a pandemic, a massive cleanup effort, 1.5 million pounds of stone, an 86-year-old from Ohio, and a local couple full of dreams to get the Van Buren Drive In running again.

Dan and Gina Beckley recently discussed how much it took to get the outdoor movie site open after 30 years of neglect. The duo also talked about the big plans they have ahead.

“We were way behind schedule on permits until recently,” Dan Beckley said. Between that, materials shortages and increased costs for everything, an early May opening had to be delayed until Oct. 1.

“We were finally back at it five or six weeks ago,” he said. They had to drop the aforementioned 1.5 million pounds of stone, at a depth of up to two feet in places, to make the muddy site passable for vehicles.

They also put up the little poles everyone expects to see at a drive-in. However, they do not hold speakers and are just parking markers, Dan Beckley explained. Audio from events is simulcast on FM radio.

There are still plenty of ghostly reminders of the old speaker system from the previous drive-in, which closed in 1991. “To this day, we will find old speaker wire popping up out of the ground,” he said.

They also find old pull tabs from beverage cans — dozens a day, he said. At least they are at the point where they can find them: they found the site covered in a tangle of wild grapes, and decades of other overgrowth, but have cleared it all away.

Another thing the Beckleys had to clean up: Bits of the old movie screen, destroyed in a 2001 tornado. “We found screen carnage spread all across the 30 acres,” Dan said.

Their new projection screen, with an LED big screen at its base, went up in the third week of July. Jerry Selby, an 86-year-old from Ohio whom Dan called a “drive in theater legend,” oversaw its construction. Selby’s the only person in the entire country who specializes in drive-in movie screen construction, he said.

“That screen went up in two days,” Dan said. Selby used local contractors and equipment to help him, including a crane from Kravitz Tree Service.

The effort led to an opening screening on Oct. 1, and the drive in will be showing first-run movies on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays until sometime next month, when it gets too cold. They are also doing weekend matinees and sports viewing parties.

However, the site is still far from finished.

The concession stand is not ready so the Beckleys have been selling pre-packaged items underneath a tent. The Beckleys and an associate worked inside the stand this week, and it is ready enough now that, with cold weather setting in, it will be used so people can escape the chilly winds.

Renovations at the drive in are mostly a family affair, with the Beckleys’ four children and four grandchildren doing much of the work. A few friends help out, too.

“It’s smoke and mirrors,” Gina Beckley said. However, “everyone’s been very good about it, very supportive. Everybody is just happy.”

“We told the public we would get it open this year and we got it open,” her husband said. “Every week we get a little more done,” Gina added. They plan to work through the winter.

They will install two more screens next year and intend to be open seven days a week. Grass ramps for cars to sit on will also get installed as the lot continues to get smoothed out.

In summer 2022, they will have a Sunday afternoon jazz series that they had to cancel this year because the site wasn’t ready. The Beckleys will also have “theme nights” where fans of popular movies can dress up as their favorite characters. Dan suggested “Rocky Horror Picture Show” and “Batman.”

One thing that’s clear so far, the Beckleys say, is that the drive-in, which originally opened about 1950, resonates with people.

“A lot of folks say they came in here as a kid,” Dan said. He mentioned that a grandpa, part of a three-generation outing to see a movie, told him he went there many times as a boy in a similar set-up, back when he was the grandson.

“That’s always cool when we hear stories like that,” Dan said.

Gina Beckley agreed. “The most rewarding part is when someone will tell us some cool story of when they used to come here, and it makes it all worthwhile.”

She recently talked to an elderly man whose father used to touch up the paint on the original screen. “It’s always neat to listen to all that stuff,” she said.

The drive-in is living history, and ironically, it took a historical event to spur its revival.

Gina Beckley explained that Dan’s media production company, Advanced Production Group, saw a downturn in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The husband and wife had long dreamed of doing something with the overgrown drive-in site while driving past it. The forced slowdown led them to finally start making plans about it, which they are now following through on.

The pandemic “gave us the time to follow through with a dream,” Gina said.