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Cottage View Drive In to be replaced with a Wal-Mart
posted by
Michael Zoldessy
on
September 13, 2012 at 7:55 am
COTTAGE GROVE, MN — After 46 years, the Cottage View Drive-In will be closing this fall to make way for a Walmart, something hinted at for months. The shopping center will swallow the theatre that the owner has been trying to sell for years due to declining revenue and the lack of funds to convert to digital.
Read more in the Pioneer Press.
(Thanks to biograph68 for providing the photo.)
Comments (9)
Oh, my god…that’s really sick! A WalMart to replace a venerable old community drive-in movie theatre. I’m not a resident or even an ex-resident of Cottage Grove, but this is horrible. WalMart has inflicted almost incalculable damage to every community that it’s moved into, by totally killing off independent businesses and totally taking the community over. Moreover, they have lousy labor policies and shoddy merchandise. The city that I presently reside in opposed a Wal*Mart coming in, which I’m happy about. Too bad Cottage Grove couldn’t have resisted also.
Same old story: declining patronage and revenues; can’t afford to go Digital; theater for sale for 5 years with no buyers. Time to reuse the land for something else. A WalMart and a new mall adjacent to it make sense in this situation.
The trouble is, rsalters, is that WalMart has done the most horrific damage to every community that it’s moved into. Not only is WalMart the biggest killer of smaller, independent businesses, but it has the worst labor policies and abuse of their workers, and about the shoddiest merchandise, which is cheap, 3rd-world junk. Moreover, the workers overseas who manufacture this shoddy stuff work under horrific sweatshop conditions, and in general, are exploited, with lousy pay. Wal*Mart workers here in the United States end up having to go on public assistance in order to get healthcare insurance, as well.
Having said all of the above, here’s a suggestion: You might want to see if you can rent the DVD version of the film “WalMart: The High Cost of Low-Pricing.”, and, if you can get hold of Bill Quinn’s book “How WalMart is Destroying American & the World and What You Can Do About It”. Both the book and the film I recommended provide excellent insight as to WalMart’s horrific policies. Not flattering, but WalMart deserves to be exposed for what they are.
Mpol- you should get together with Michael Moore and make a docu about this awful monster. Gotta go, am on my way to my local WalMart with a long shopping list. And good luck to Cottage Grove; the new WalMart and adjacent mall will provide much needed prop tax revenue as opposed to the peanuts that the drive-in was generating.
Looked like a rather nice drive in. Nice marquee. Sad to see another one biting the dust. Call me old fashioned, but I miss drive-ins, huge old movie palaces and 35mm film. All this progress, you can keep it.
To each their own, rsalters, but what I said about their lousy labor policies, exploitive wages and sweatshop condition that their workers are routinely subject to, as well as their super-shoddy merchandise, which is cheap third-world junk, is not a joke. It’s all perfectly true.
If you wish to shop at WalMart, that’s your prerogative, rsalters, but just be aware of what you’re getting, and of the fact that WalMart is the biggest killer of independent businesses and communities at large.
Hey, swagga212. Welcome to the club! The city that I presently reside in also opposed a Wal Mart grocery store coming in, and I’m glad about that, also.
Having a nice sign out front (very nostalgic) just isn’t enough when patronage falls. Why should Cottage Grove “resist” WalMart? Who knows, perhaps WalMart was invited there. The drive-in’s owner has had the property for sale for 5 years now with no takers. He’s smart to sell to WalMart. The increase in property tax to the town is huge (from both WalMart and the planned adjacent mall). Hey, it all boils down to $$$$. Because of declining patronage and interest, the drive-in, nice sign notwithstanding, has become obsolete.
Somebody get out there and take some pictures of it before it’s gone forever!