After an unsuccessful Kickstarter fundraising campaign ended Sunday, owners of the Fairlee Drive-In are determined to keep it open for at least the coming season. The family-owned business has tried selling T-shirts, hosting a concert and an auction and reaching out through social media to raise money for a new $77,000 projector, said Peter Trapp, the drive-in’s owner. Built in 1950, the drive-in has become a local favorite, as well as a beloved sophomore summer experience for many Dartmouth students.
Morgan Curtis ’14 said she remembers the Fairlee Drive-In as a highlight of summer 2012.
“We brought blankets and chairs and stayed for the full double feature,” she said. “It felt like a wonderful slice of a bygone era, a piece of Americana, with the flickering lights and old-time advertisements.”
The Fairlee Motel and Drive-In Theater lies along Route 5 in Fairlee, Vt. The drive-in has been operating continuously since 1980 and was bought by Trapp and his family in 2003.
Business is highly correlated with the country’s economic situation, Trapp said. Clientele peaked in 2007, but soon collapsed during the recession. The Trapp family has since faced increasing problems as revenues have diminished.
Trapp said the biggest challenge they have faced is that the type of film their projector can process, the traditional 35mm film in use since the 1950s, is no longer being used by movie distributors. The Trapps invested in renewing the projector when they first bought the theater, but 35mm film was still the standard at the time.
The media industry now has adopted digital projection. This requires a new projector that can stream films and means that the previous projector has lost its value, so it cannot be sold and used to help fund the new equipment, Trapp said.
“The projector we have now could last another 20 years,” Trapp said. “The problem is today’s technology has made it obsolete.”
Garrett Simpson ’11 grew up near a drive-in movie theater and recalls the nights he spent there as some of his favorite childhood memories. The digitalization of projectors not only affects the Fairlee Drive-In, but hundreds nationwide, he said. The large investment required for purchasing a new projector can be debilitating, he added.
“I’d hate to see such an opportunity leave Dartmouth students,” Simpson said.
Due to the Fairlee Drive-In’s rural location, the theater struggles to attract a large number of customers, Trapp said. The drive-in’s audience is comprised of local residents and people passing through the area. Audience demographics change seasonally, as children come more frequently during summer vacation, and depending on the type of movie being shown.
As digital projectors have standardized, the Trapps have spent the past two years raising money for a new projector. Their initiatives raised around $22,000, Trapp said.
For its latest campaign, the drive-in used Kickstarter, an online crowd-funding platform where people seeking investments propose their projects to an open audience. If projects meet their monetary goals in the allotted time, donors receive gifts from the organizers.
Cooper Trapp, Peter Trapp’s son, launched the Kickstarter campaign to raise the needed money. The campaign ended on Mar. 2, collecting $27,595 of the $55,108 goal, with funds from 370 donors.
Over 100 people pledged $25 to $50, and would have received a T-shirt and 8 inches of film if the campaign had reached its goal. One donor pledged between $5,000 and $10,000 and would have received a private showing in the theater’s 400-car field.
Because they did not raise the full amount, the Trapps cannot collect the pledged funds. The campaign picked up over the last week, Trapp said, jumping from around $12,000 mid-week to $22,000 on Saturday. Trapp said he was hopeful about these results and will consider trying again.
Rosalind Lee, a Hanover resident for over 20 years, said she feels the Kickstarter campaign was not given sufficient publicity. She discovered it on her own just last week, then began to publicize it to the Upper Valley by sending emails to town-based and regional email Listservs.
“Through community awareness, the campaign could have pulled through,” she said.
Lee said she hopes to see a new campaign with greater community support, as nights at the drive-in have been very memorable experiences for many.
“It’s such a fun thing to do with your family, and something that not everybody gets to experience anymore,” she said.
Trapp said he is determined to keep the drive-in open for at least the coming season, though the inability to buy a new projector will affect the drive-in’s operations for the next year, reducing movie selection particularly for new releases.
“As of right now, we can still find 35mm film, but we don’t know how long that will last,” he said.
