Eastside

Repeat view of the left side of the above photo today, showing what used to be the back rows of the theater.

Several correspondents wrote to say that the Bel-Kirk wasn't originally called the Eastside; rather that they were different theaters. I didn't believe them, since the address of the Eastside (108th & NE 38th) is so close to the Bel-Kirk, also said to be owned by SRO, that they must have been the same. For them not to be the same theater the chain would have had to have rebuilt the theater in the same neighborhood, which didn't make sense. Well, while reading a non-drive-in photocopied article from 1973 with no drive-in ads included, I looked over the movie listings, and I saw separate listings for the Bel-Kirk and the Eastside. I went back to my 1973 map of the area, and I saw a gravel pit in a rectangular shape at the address that could have been a drive-in. When I found the 1968 map, it showed the same arrangement of gravel pit at 108th & 38th and drive-in at the Bel-Kirk location. Even the 1982 map shows the Bel-Kirk at the same place it was in 1968. It turns out that the theater had a very short life, from May 28, 1969 to August 28, 1973. It turns out that the Bel-Kirk was first owned by another chain: Metro theaters, which also at the time owned the Valley in Auburn. An ad for the Eastside touted its in-car heaters and indoor auditorium, as if to distinguish itself from its competiton. Each theater's ads carefully gave its theater's own address instead of a general neighborhood refrence.


A lengthwise view of the field from the local paper advertisement. It looks like they had already paved the back of the lot but not the front of the lot when this picture was taken. Also, the screen is on a hill past the front of the lot, which perhaps meant the row hills didn't need to be that tall. Bellevue American, May 22. 1969

Repeat view of the above photo today. Note the tree fingerprint, and the valley to the left of the tree horizon.


Closing ad, Seattle Times, August 28, 1973. While this theater was closing with The Sound of Music, the nearby Bel-Kirk was continuing on with Fritz the Cat. Ah, 1973.

The theater closed on August 28th, 1973, and SRO bought the Bel-Kirk next year. In the same week's edition of the local Bellevue American (August 30, 1973) came two stories about the theater's fate. In the business section was a story about the use of the site for a five building office complex funded by Coldwell Banker. They said they bought the land from the theater chain for a price in excess of $1 million. Elsewhere in the same issue was an article about how the fledgling Metro Transit was setting up a Park & Ride in "A specially signed portion of the Eastside Drive-In Theater." This article was for changes taking effect September 5, less than a week after the theater's closing. In early maps of the bus system, the Park & Ride bore the same name as the theater, but now it is called the South Kirkland Park & Ride. Metro could probably have moved in to the theater lot immediately thanks to the foresight of SRO paving the lot, and the shallow landscaping due to the high screen. Merto didn't use the Bel-Kirk for a park & ride because it was one block too far from the bus line. Because the park & ride is still there, the developers never built more than two office towers on the lot, and mostly they are in the playground area between the lot and the screen. The Park & Ride at least preserves the area as a parking lot, so the old pictures sort-of match with the current view. The location of the screen up the hill is undeveloped and may still have anchor artifacts up there, but I'm not going exploring until a weekend, when I won't have office workers staring at me.

Update: I climbed the hill on Sunday February 20. The screen site should be near the north face of the northern-most building, but when I climbed the rock wall I couldn't find the terrain from the historic picture, to say nothing of any screen anchors. However, under one of the buildings were parking stalls reserved for a company named Simplex, which is also the name of a projector and drive-in speaker company. Coinidence?


At last! Photographic proof of the Eastside (upper left) and Bel-Kirk. At first it appeared that the screen could be in that triangle at the upper left of the lot inside the exit ramps. Instead, that's the play equipment area. The screen is that white line past the light-colored lot and well into some dark colored greenery (up a hill, as it turns out). That theater was huge and looks even bigger next to the Bel-Kirk. Washington State Department of Transportation. September 16, 1971


Microsoft Terraserver satellite image of this site today.


USGS Kirkland, 1950, 1968 and 1973

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