A bit of West Valley City history will come to a close on Dec. 22. That’s the date for the end of the Redwood Drive-In Swap Meet that has been hosted at the site for more than six decades.

On Sept. 17, the city council voted to rezone the 26-acre site from general commercial to medium density residential. That paved the way for EDGE Homes to purchase the property from DeAnza Land and Leisure Corp out of Los Angeles so it can now build nearly 300 for-sale housing units on the site. That plan calls for three-story condos (40 units), two-story townhouses (244 units) and 15 single-family homes.

That decision was strongly opposed by vendors and supporters of the swap meet at the council meeting. They hoped to work with city leaders on an alternative way to save the meet, including sale of the property to vendors who hoped to develop the site into a more permanent home for the meet. An online petition on change.org received over 22,000 signatures in opposition to the rezoning. And before the Sept. 17 council meeting, hundreds of people held a peaceful protest in front of city hall to draw attention to their pleas for keeping the swap meet alive. Many of them later sat in at the meeting, holding signs for their cause, and over three dozen spoke during a public hearing on the issue.

There was no movement to consider that, so the sale by DeAnza went through as planned.

The drive-in itself opened in 1948 and flourished for 40-plus years. As in-home entertainment grew and the drive-in theater business lessened in attendance and profitability, many owners of those theaters closed them and sold or redeveloped their properties. DeAnza once owned a number of drive-ins around the country, but began getting out of the business. Redwood is its last property.

Vendors have been looking at other options, perhaps finding another large vacant lot somewhere in West Valley City or on that side of the valley to reopen. As of now, nothing has been found.

One vendor the West Valley Journal spoke to in September was Juan Bastidas, who has been a vendor at the meet for years. He said it’s been important to keep the meet as it provides extra income to support his family, and he worries about how the closure will affect other families. 

“I fear that many vendors will go into bankruptcy,” he said. “They have mortgages, and if they don’t have that extra income, I don’t know what they’ll do. I understand that West Valley is growing and we need more houses, but we also need more businesses. Why do they want to take this big place—26 acres—and make it all housing? It might be nice for them to make 300 families happy, but they’re going to cause hundreds more to be out of work and bankrupt. It doesn’t make sense and it’s not fair.”

There has not been an announced time for the start of demolition or the beginning of new construction on the site.