What could become one of the United States’ largest solar farms broke ground Thursday in Bass Lake. The 13,000-acre Mammoth Solar Project is being developed by a partnership involving Israeli energy company Doral Group. Governor Eric Holcomb, Israeli Ambassador Gilad Erdan, and numerous state and local officials converged on the Melody Drive-In for the groundbreaking ceremony.
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The fall season is officially here, but there’s still one more chance to experience a popular summertime attraction. The Melody Drive-In Theater at Bass Lake will be open tonight for the final time in 2016. Continue reading
A local summertime tradition is about to return for another year. Melody Drive-In at Bass Lake will reopen for its 2016 movie season next weekend. Continue reading
Spring is on its way, and that means the start of movie season at the Melody Drive-In at Bass Lake. Continue reading
Get a sneak peak at one of the most anticipated movie releases of the summer tomorrow night at the Melody Drive-In at Bass Lake. The theatre will offer a special advance screening of “The Avengers Age of Ultron” at 8 p.m. The box office will open at 7, and the concession stand will be open as well. Continue reading
A sure sign of spring is the grand opening of the Melody Drive In Theater at Bass Lake. Owner Fred Heise says both screens are ready for Friday night’s features. They include “Furious 7″, “Cinderella” and “McFarland USA.” Continue reading
Parrotheads will be flocking to the Melody Drive-In Theater in Bass Lake in droves on Thursday to catch perennial beach bum Jimmy Buffett’s “Live at the Drive-In” simulcast show. He’s performing at a theater in Fort Worth, Texas and making a closed-circuit feed of the show available exclusively to similar venues. Melody Drive-In owner Fred Heise says the gates will open at 5 p.m., with plenty of pre-show activities and entertainment for fans. Continue reading
A sure sign of spring in the Kankakee Valley is the opening of the Melody Drive In Theater at Bass Lake for the season. Fred Heise says they’re all set to open Friday, April 4 with a blockbuster and have several other popular flicks scheduled throughout the spring and summer. For Friday, Screen 1 will feature Captain America 2 and Need for Speed. Mr. Peabody and Sherman and Non-Stop will be showing on Screen 2. Other movies lined up for the summer include Rio 2, which is scheduled the week of April 11. Fred Heise is excited about the lineup for later in the season.
The weather is slowly warming up as we approach the spring season, and many summer movie enthusiasts are chomping at the bit to enjoy the warmer air and a good movie. Fred Heise from the Melody Drive-In recently announced that the drive-in theater has set a tentative date to open this season, weather permitting.
The Melody Drive-In will reopen this weekend, according to Fred Heise, who explained that the drive-in will be operating “one-legged” for a period of time while they work on replacing the screen that was damaged from strong winds that toppled the screen and caused extensive damage to the ticket booth. Fortunately, Heise said the replacement should be completed before the Fourth of July – but until then, he said they’ll still be showing movies.
“It will just be the second screen,” Heise explained. “The first one is a total disaster, so we’re working on the cleanup on that as we speak and we’ll, hopefully, have another one up by the Fourth of July if everything goes as planned.”
The Melody Drive In should be back in business by the weekend. Co-owner Fred Heise, Jr. tells WKVI news the goal is to open with movies on screen two Friday, a week after strong winds ripped down screen 1 and caused extensive damage to the ticket booth at the popular Bass Lake attraction. Meanwhile, Heise is waiting for an insurance adjuster to assess the damage before the piles of debris can be hauled off. Nobody was injured.
Heise says his long-term goal is to replace the damaged screen, but until then he says movies will rotate through on the remaining one.
“We’re going to have to shuffle a little bit as far as the types of movies and when we’re going to play certain movies, so if people can just be a little patient we will play everyone’s movies. We may have to wait on a few of them, but we will eventually get around to them,” Heise says. Before opening for the season, the Melody Drive In underwent a digital upgrade. Heise says the past weekend has been quite trying for his parents. He adds the entire family will be fine, and says they appreciate the outpouring of support from friends and neighbors.
Fierce storms whipped through the Kankakee Valley area Friday night causing damage.
The storm caused flooding in Pulaski County where over three inches of rain fell in a half-hour period. A Pulaski County officer noted to dispatch that the water was up over the hood of his squad car while in the town of Winamac. The drains couldn’t keep up with the amount of water that fell in that short amount of time. Several cars were stranded in the road during the storm, several trees fell, a power outage was reported, and several roads washed out as a result of the rushing water. Homeowners may also need to deal with roofing damages due to heavy rains and strong winds. Businesses have been affected as well, making commercial roof replacement companies a bit busier than usual for this time of year.
The Pulaski County Highway Department was out Saturday patching up the roads and cutting up the many trees that fell in the road.
Luckily, no injuries were reported.
The Melody Drive-In theater at Bass Lake suffered damage as well with the demolition of Screen One. The Starke County Sheriff’s Department received a couple of other notices of trees down but no other damage.
Marshall County Emergency Management Agency Director Clyde Avery said there is ponding in fields in the Marshall County area and he’s monitoring river levels after the storms. Trees were reported down in the area, but no injuries were reported.
Photos by Denice Daggett and William Boldt
Tom Berg, Jerry Curtis, Lenny Dessauer and Anita Goodan from WKVI were at the Melody Drive-In at Bass Lake last night to help promote the premiere of the movie Rock of Ages.
Music from the 1980s “hair band” era was featured live on K99.3 from 6 to 8:30 p.m. and the crew gave away movie posters, Indiana Beach tickets and more. Fans from the rock era also came by the WKVI broadcast area and talked about their rock band experiences. Some visitors saw Rock of Ages, the Broadway musical, and were excited to compare the stage production to the screen production.
The movie, which starred Tom Cruise, Julianne Hough and Catherine Zeta-Jones, had some great highlights, including great music from the hair band era. The movie will be shown at the Melody Drive-In all weekend into next week.
Thank you to the Heise family for being such great hosts and for letting us put on such a great event. We hope to do another event in the future.
