Starlite Drive-In
1124 Edgewater Drive,
Pekin,
IL
61554
1124 Edgewater Drive,
Pekin,
IL
61554
2 people
favorited this theater
The Starlite Drive-in was operated by Kerasotes Theatres in 1953. This was a drive-in with a single screen that showed double feature movies. The main movie was always shown first at dusk, a B-movie would be shown as the late movie and would start around 11:15pm. They had one building that was the concession stand. They served great BBQ, hot dogs, burgers and pizza.
The drive-in was destroyed in a fire in 1990. The Showplace 12 multi-screen theatre now resides where the Starlite Drive-In used to be. This new theatre opened up around 2000 or 2001.
Contributed by
Jim Gentry
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Recent comments (view all 8 comments)
I believe this venue opened around 1950. Around 1990, a fire destroyed most of the concession building. The rest of the property bulldozed a few years later.
This burned down around 1990 during winter. A man broke into the concession stand and started a fire to keep warm.
My wife and I would go to the Starlite when our son was just a baby. The Starlite was the last drive-in in the Peoria area and if we couldn’t get a babysitter we could take our son and he would fall asleep by the time the movie would start.
1999 and 2010 aerial pictures added
A young kid around twenty years old was running from the cops and started the fire while hiding out from them. It was a suicide. His mother used to be our landlady.
Vintage Aerial link with additional history by J Wald, whose father was the projectionist.
https://vintageaerial.com/photos/illinois/tazewell/1980/MTA/31/8
Showplace 12 has its own page
The Starlite closed on September 15, 1991 with “Hot Shots” and “The Naked Gun 2½”, and the concession/projection building was destroyed by a large fire two weeks later on October 3, 1991. The fire also killed a 21-year-old man named Steven R. Howell when the roof fatally collapsed on him. It was demolished in the mid-1990s and Kerasotes opened their Showplace at the former Starlite site on November 19, 1999.