88 Drive-In owner says property taxes quadrupled to $60,000 since Gallagher

COMMERCE CITY — The property tax bill on a family-owned drive-in theater that has operated in Adams County for half a century has roughly quadrupled in four years, its owner told The Kim Monson Show, and the entire sum comes due each spring before the first car rolls through the gate.

Susan Kochevar, who owns the 88 Drive-In Theatre in Commerce City, said property taxes on the nearly seven-acre property climbed from about $13,900 four years ago to $40,000 two years ago to $60,000 this year. “So the property taxes on that were $13,000 four years ago, a little over like 13.9, something like that,” Kochevar said on The Kim Monson Show. “Then they jumped up to $40,000 a year two years ago. And now this year they’ve jumped all the way to $60,000 a year.”

The timing of the bill compounds the strain. The drive-in earns nothing during the winter, yet the tax payment lands before the season opens. “In my case, I have to pay that before we’ve ever opened the doors to make any money every year,” Kochevar said. “So the whole lump sum is due. You can make payments, but essentially it’s all due pretty much in April. And I haven’t made a dime.”

A 50-year family business absorbs the shock

The 88 Drive-In has been in Kochevar’s family since 1976, and it reopened this spring for its 50th season. Admission is $10 per person, and children under 12 get in free. To offset rising costs, Kochevar said the theater added a $10-per-car food permit fee for guests who bring their own food, a model she said drive-ins around the country are adopting as property taxes climb.

Kochevar said the tax burden ripples outward. “And of course, when those property taxes go up, everything else rises, too,” she said. “You know, if you’re renting, your rent goes up because the landlord has to pay an increase in taxes.”

She also pointed ahead to the prospect of further increases. “So I hear that they’re talking about more property increases potentially for next year,” Kochevar said. “That is insane.”

What the Gallagher repeal changed

Kochevar tied the surge to the repeal of the Gallagher Amendment, the constitutional formula that had shaped Colorado property taxes for nearly four decades. Adopted in 1982 and drafted by Dennis Gallagher, a Colorado Democrat state legislator, the Gallagher Amendment held the residential share of the statewide property tax base near 45% and ratcheted the residential assessment rate steadily downward over the decades. The non-residential, or commercial, rate was fixed in the constitution at 29%.

Colorado voters repealed Gallagher in November 2020 by approving Amendment B, with about 57.5% voting yes. With the residential ratchet gone, the downward pressure that had restrained residential rates ended, and the commercial rate stayed locked at 29%.

That commercial rate has since started to come down in statute. Under SB24-233, the commercial and nonresidential assessment rate dropped from 29% to 27% for property tax year 2025 and falls to 25% for 2026 and after. The same law caps annual growth in local-government property tax revenue at 5.5% above a 2023 base year. Even with those reductions in the assessment rate, rising property values can push the actual dollar bill higher, which is the squeeze Kochevar described.

Her experience mirrors a broader frustration. “And I know everybody now is complaining, I think, equally about property taxes since they make changes or erase the Gallagher amendment,” Kochevar said. “People are having a heck of a time even staying in their homes.”

The fairness problem in economic-development deals

Beyond the assessment formula, Kochevar raised a second grievance: established businesses pay the full tax burden while governments hand incentives to newcomers. Colorado’s Office of Economic Development and International Trade administers more than 100 programs, including job-growth tax credits, enterprise-zone sales-and-use tax exemptions, and a deal-closing Strategic Fund. At the local level, urban renewal authorities and tax increment financing can route revenue to subsidize developers.

Kochevar said a subsidized competitor would enjoy an advantage she cannot match. “And if, say, somebody wants to build a drive-in fairly close to me and they get the economic development money and they are not paying the sales taxes, why I, the person who has been running the business for 50 years as of this year, have to pay that full burden of taxes?” she said. “It’s harder on me. I can’t offer maybe even as many breaks to my customers as my potential new competitor.”

For Kochevar, the result undercuts the very stability that established businesses provide. “Stable businesses are very important for communities to add stability to the community, obviously,” she said. “You know, my competitors got a huge break. That is really wrong.”

The 88 Drive-In sits in the Irondale neighborhood of Commerce City, surrounded by industrial warehouses, a setting that has drawn developer interest before. In 2023, Kochevar planned to sell the lot to a Chicago developer that proposed replacing the theater with an 80,500-square-foot warehouse; the rezoning proposal stalled at the Commerce City council and was withdrawn, as The Colorado Sun reported in its coverage of the state’s dwindling drive-ins. By March 2024 the developer had dropped the purchase entirely, and the theater reopened that spring, Westword reported.