‘Myrtle Manor’ park wants city to change rules to allow permanent souvenir shop

The mobile home park at the center of TLC’s “Welcome to Myrtle Manor” is attempting to get permanent permission from the city to sell souvenirs.

Patrick’s Mobile Home Park has to approach the city every 90 days to ask for a “special event,” or temporary permission to operate retail in a residential zone. The special event is allowed because the park is part of a TV show.

But Cecil Patrick, owner of the park, said he is hoping for a zoning change that would allow him to sell merchandise such as T-shirts and other novelties without constantly renewing the measure.

“We’re not trying to do anything wrong,” Patrick said. “It’s something we’ve been doing for five years.”

The process to change zoning rules, however, has involved juggling several factors. Carol Coleman, director of planning for the city of Myrtle Beach, said the city wants to allow limited retail in mobile home parks without fundamentally changing residential zones to commercial zones.

“The concern was — are we going to be opening it up so that every mobile home park is going to open some retail or something like that?” Coleman said.

Campgrounds are allowed to have stores, Coleman said, but no other residential area is allowed to operate retail businesses.

The exception, however, is a store in a park at 1500 S.C. 15, just a few blocks from Patrick’s Mobile Home Park. The convenience store there existed before the land was part of the city, so it was allowed to continue to operate when the land was annexed, despite not conforming with city code.

Patrick said more stores like that one could be good for mobile home parks. “We’ve got 120 families here,” he said.

City Planner Allison Hardin said that the city is working on a fix that would let Patrick operate his store without continually asking for re-approval and also allow retail in a few other situations. The change would also bring the nearby convenience store in line with city code.

“This is our first shot, and if people are uncomfortable with it, we can scale it back,” she said.

Hardin said that to limit the amount of retail to what the city classifies as “manufactured home parks,” the ordinance would only allow convenience-store-style retail in parks with 10 or more homes. Additionally, the parks would have to have management on site that regulates the appearance of the homes, and any new stores could not become a nuisance for residents.

The proposal will be presented at a public hearing July 19.

Patrick said he will continue to operate his souvenir shop even if it still has to be re-approved every three months.

The show based on the park, which has had three seasons, is in limbo — Patrick and TLC said that plans to film a fourth season are on hold. Business at the souvenir shop, he said, has fallen about 30 percent from last year. However, visitors still come to the shop, many from several states away.

“We’ve made a lot of money and we’ve met a lot of people,” Patrick said. “We had a lady in here Tuesday from Kentucky, and she had collected 8,000 signatures on a petition to send to TLC, asking it to come back and film another season.”

While Patrick is unsure about the future of “Myrtle Manor,” he said the store will stay open as long as it makes money.

“To be honest with you, that’s where the money’s at,” Patrick said. “The money’s not in filming the show. The money’s in the merchandise.”

This story was originally published July 5, 2016 at 9:24 AM with the headline "‘Myrtle Manor’ park wants city to change rules to allow permanent souvenir shop."