Saving Myrtle Beach history: 1960s motel gets revamp, stands as beacon to city’s past
Every weather-worn, time-battered motel and lodge along Myrtle Beach’s Ocean Boulevard has its own story, a piece of the city’s history, which often is lost when a new developer comes in, tearing the building down for yet another high-rise.
For one motel, the story this time looks a little different. Holiday Shores, which reopened its doors on New Year’s Eve, may become the gold standard for saving the Grand Strand’s dying motels that have fallen into disrepair in the shadows of nearly 30-story oceanfront giants.
Holiday Shores now provides a splash of color and old-school vibrancy to the far northern tip of Myrtle Beach. Its bright orange walls, white-painted brick and thin spiral staircases scream 1960s fabulous. Seeing the motel feels like being pulled into a time machine, or a different universe.
It’s the second motel that the Rogers Lewis law firm has helped revitalize. The Hawaiian-themed Waikiki Village on Ocean Boulevard was the firm’s first. It reopened in 2018 as a boutique “retro motel” focused on providing a unique Myrtle Beach lodging experience not normally found in the massive Hilton and Marriott properties, attorney Robert Lewis said.
The pair of properties point toward a new direction that Myrtle Beach’s development could take in the coming years. Rather than bulldozing old buildings, erasing their history and that part of the city’s character, Rogers Lewis and the city want to take what the area already has and make it look brand new.
“I recall the Myrtle Beach area and the Grand Strand in the ‘60s and ‘70s when I was a child and teenager,” Lewis said, “and I think it’s lost a lot of that character as larger and larger resorts are being built.
“I just felt like that someone needed to come here and make an effort to save some of these mid-century modern motels and some of the historic fiber of the of the Grand Strand,” he said.
Historic preservation
Lewis, a Grand Strand resident himself, said some developers see historic preservation as a costly endeavor with few incentives beyond the moral positives. To some, he said, it’s easier to simply raze dilapidated buildings down to their foundations and start over.
In place of torn down buildings, skyscrapers can be built anew, with dozens or hundreds more rooms than the the properties began with. Many existing Myrtle Beach motels, especially those on Ocean Boulevard, are just two floors with a few dozen rooms each.
Adding to the problem, many of these longstanding motels, like Holiday Shores, have lost their direct views of the ocean to massive beachfront high-rises.
The Rogers Lewis law firm, which has it hands in redevelopment efforts all over the region, wants to change the futile mindset surrounding old Myrtle Beach buildings.
“It’s a lot of times a lot cheaper than demolishing and scrapping and starting from scratch,” preservation consultant Janie Campbell said. Some projects are not just cheaper but can become “incredibly lucrative” for developers willing to put in the effort, she said.
What makes rehabilitating these buildings not just possible but even economically advantageous, Lewis says, is their extensive use of government incentives like historic preservation and abandoned building tax credits and grants. His firm focuses on finding every incentive possible to lower the cost of these redevelopments.
After acquiring a historic property, the law firm works with the National Park Service to get it listed on the National Register of Historic Places, opening up a litany of government incentives. Consultants like Campbell then work with the South Carolina Department of Archives and History to research the building and decide what can and can’t be changed during the renovations.
It’s an involved process and can lead to unexpected delays, Campbell said, but she believes the end result is worth it.
“This is probably the fifth or sixth motel that’s been listed in the National Register of Historic Places in Myrtle Beach,” she said. “Of those, two have been demolished. So there’s really a small handful of historically significant properties left in Myrtle Beach.”
The law firm has also had its hand in revitalization efforts in downtown Myrtle Beach, including bringing Grand Strand Brewing and an events center to the new Arts & Innovation District. Those properties were put on the National Register of Historic Places. They also helped Tidal Creek Brewhouse in Market Common, which opened June 2020, receive abandoned building tax credits.
“When our (City) Council voted on historic tax credits, we knew it would bring value to our entire city,” Myrtle Beach Mayor Brenda Bethune said. “We have so many hotels and other buildings that qualify for these credits, and it’s an excellent tool to bring new life to old buildings. This positively affects us by raising property values for the property and their neighbors, and it freshens the aesthetics of our community.”
This kind of work has grown in popularity around the country in recent years, as young people seek out walkable, urban living spaces, Bloomberg’s CityLab and the National Trust for Historic Preservation report.
Rogers Lewis hopes its historic preservation efforts in Myrtle Beach serve as a catalyst. As more and more buildings in the Grand Strand find new life in an economically viable manner, maybe traditional developers who’d rather tear an old building down will see reason to save what’s already there.
“We find that doing one really good rehabilitation project ... really accelerates development in that area,” Lewis said. “And (suddenly) other folks are interested in coming in the area doing a similar type renovation. So it really adds to the economic development.”
“Quintessential hallmarks”
Holiday Shores and Waikiki Village were built in the wake of a post-World War II economic boom in vacations and car manufacturing, Campbell said. For the first time in the country’s history, not only did everyday people have the money to vacation, they also had the transportation to get to there quickly.
“At one point, (these motels) were all that was on the landscape of Myrtle Beach,” she said. “Come early 1970s, you start seeing high rises, and into the ‘80s, you really start seeing the mom and pop motels being stripped away and replaced. It’s just such an important piece of when Myrtle Beach became Myrtle Beach instead of that little coastal town.”
Holiday Shores was built in the so-called “populuxe” style, which was defined by cheaply and quickly built motels with vibrant colors to make customers feel like they were living in luxury without being charged through the roof for their stay.
“It’s kind of cheaply built, quickly constructed concrete blocks, stucco, minimalist appearance, but still has kind of unique, quirky features to it,” Campbell said, pointing out features like the spiral staircases, lattice brick work and in-ground pool, a new feature for motels of that era. “So, in this case, we have the brightly colored panels that we have recently painted orange to kind of give more of a pop.”
The 1950s and 1960s building boom that led to Holiday Shores’ construction forced owners to find any way to make their motel different, Campbell said. “It arose when all these other places were doing that, too, so it needed a unique way to stand out for motorists just driving along,” she said.
As Rogers Lewis put together a plan for renovations, Campbell said the firm’s goal was to keep “all the unique, character-defining charm of a popular, mid-century modern hotel while still” updating it to contemporary standards.
“These projects are so great at keeping these quintessential hallmarks of Myrtle Beach and its history alive while still transitioning them into the 21st century and keeping customers and keeping travelers coming back,” she said.
Opening on the last day of 2020, the 29-room motel’s first month has been unsurprisingly slow, with just around 50 nights booked. However, Campbell said they expect traffic to pick up in the spring as the region warms up and COVID-19 vaccines become more widely available.
Lewis said he hopes Holiday Shores and Waikiki Village can also take advantage of Myrtle Beach’s popularity as a vacation destination for young people and college students.
“I have children that are in their 20s and early 30s, and with that age group, they would rather stay at a really small hotel or motel that has a lot of local character than stay at a Holiday Inn or Hilton Courtyard by Marriott or something that is going to be the same whether they’re in South Carolina or Birmingham, Alabama, or somewhere in Mississippi,” he said. “They’re looking for more of that experience.”
This story was originally published February 9, 2021 at 10:40 AM with the headline "Saving Myrtle Beach history: 1960s motel gets revamp, stands as beacon to city’s past."
