MYRTLE BEACH — “Open” repeatedly spells out and flashes in the front window of Baywatch Bar and Grill on Ocean Boulevard.
No one is inside.
Thomas Crowder anxiously taps his fingers on a slick table that’s reflecting the red neon sign.
Less than two months after opening, Crowder is resigned to permanently unplugging the sign by the end of the summer.
“This is Friday night on the boulevard? This is what Myrtle Beach is now? No people. No customers. Empty sidewalks,” he said bringing a Bic flame to a menthol Marlboro. “We should be inside cooking and slinging drinks. This isn’t right. We aren’t going to make it. We can’t make it. The police’s traffic plan is killing us.”
Crowder and Kelly McDaniel opened the bar and grill on March 1. On March 8, Myrtle Beach police began the summer traffic plan.
The plan, revived from last summer, closes Ocean Boulevard to vehicle traffic on weekends between 8th Avenue North and 9th Avenue North.
Bumper-to-bumper traffic in the southbound lane on Ocean Boulevard stretches from 16th Avenue North to 9th Avenue North on April 13, 2024. The boulevard block between 8th Avenue North and 9th Avenue North is closed to vehicle traffic. The Myrtle Beach Police Department said the traffic plan will continue through the summer every Friday and Saturday night from 4 p.m. until 2 a.m. Traffic is diverted from the boulevard a few blocks up to Kings Highway.
The block has been empty, save for a recently razed ropes course, for more than a decade when the Myrtle Beach Pavilion closed. It’s activated several times a year with seasonal events, the Carolina Country Music Festival and beach volleyball. Otherwise, it’s a yawning hole in the city skyline lit by streetlights and car headlights. That three-block area stretches past Chester, York and Flagg streets on the south side. On the north side it ends Withers Alley, Withers Drive and Chester Street. It goes west to east from Kings Highway on the shoulder of the Arts and Innovation District to the ocean.
On the northern end of the boulevard block is the throbbing central business district from Ripley’s Believe it or Not, Peaches Corner and the Bowery.
The weekend traffic plan is 4 p.m.-2 a.m. every Friday and Saturday through the season. Police officers have instituted the plan on a few Sundays.
It includes one-way, southbound vehicle traffic from 16th Avenue North to 9th Avenue North. The northbound lane is dedicated for police cruisers and other emergency vehicles.
An officer talks to the driver of a squat truck during a traffic stop in the center of Myrtle Beach’s Ocean Boulevard on April 13, 2024. Squatted trucks are illegal in the Carolinas. The trucks are raised on the front and lowered on the back.
The sidewalks, bike lanes and parking lots on both sides of the boulevard are open throughout the plan area.
Cones, barricades and police officers block vehicles from traveling south on the boulevard from Peaches Corner toward Crowder’s Baywatch Bar and Grill. Southbound boulevard traffic at Ripley’s and Peaches Corner is directed to Kings Highway where vehicles can turn left but not left again toward the boulevard until 7th Avenue North, overshooting the Baywatch by a block.
That pattern, Crowder points out, means traffic has to turn left again on the boulevard from 7th Avenue North to make the one-block loop past his business to another set of barricades and cones set up at 8th Avenue North. From 8th Avenue North, traffic is sent back up to Kings Highway where it can turn left, but not northbound on the boulevard until 16th Avenue North at Chapin Park.
Thomas Crowder opened his bar the first weekend of March with a $300,000 investment. The second weekend of March, the Myrtle Beach Police Department closed the boulevard between 8th Avenue North and 9th Avenue North.
The summer weekend traffic plan does not reach past 8th Avenue North, meaning both lanes of the boulevard are open south of 8th Avenue North. It also means northbound traffic on Kings Highway can turn right onto 8th Avenue North and right again on the boulevard to pass Crowder’s bar.
The Baywatch Bar and Grill is in a string of businesses at 8th Avenue North on the west side of the boulevard anchored by Bargain Beachwear.
“This was supposed to be smooth sailing. The worst thing I should have to do was count my money,” Crowder said of the prime location and his $300,000 investment in the bar. “We could make it if the city would stop shutting us down. It’s the traffic pattern that’s killing us. Tourists don’t know. They see the road closed and it’s dark and blue lights are everywhere. I didn’t open it to be a millionaire. I was in it for the long haul, but I’ve got to be able to pay my bills. It’s killing all of us down here.”
Crowder knows business. He’s a mechanic, operates a tow truck company and works in construction.
But the numbers at his bar aren’t adding up to a bright future.
With his shoulders slumped, Crowder flipped through the records on his register. His first week, before the traffic plan started, the business brought in more than $1,000 nightly. Since the traffic plan started, he said most days were less than $200 in total sales.
Summer traffic plan worries some in Myrtle Beach
“We didn’t do anything wrong. We did it all right. We’re clean, new, have good food and drinks. It’s a great location. But we aren’t going to make it because of the police. They are killing us with this traffic plan,” Thomas Crowder said looking out on an empty Ocean Boulevard from his Baywatch Bar and Grill on April 19, 2024. Crowder opened the bar the first weekend of March with a $300,000 investment. The second weekend of March the Myrtle Beach Police closed the boulevard between 8th Avenue North and 9th Avenue North.
He has had a few nights inching over $1,000 in sales since March 8. But, he said, those sales were after bars on the northern end of the boulevard closed and people were walking back to their hotels.
“I had less than $50 for the night until about 1 or 2. I was here until 4:30 in the morning cooking and serving food. So yeah, I’m borrowing from Peter to pay Paul at this point. I’m using the money from my other businesses to make it here,” he said. “Myrtle Beach used to be about coming to the boulevard, cruising and having a good time. Now it’s about what?”
Across the boulevard, Reid Bozell of 8th Ave. Tiki Bar and Grill and LaCantina Tex-Mex Restaurant feels the impact too.
The sidewalks and businesses are open on Myrtle Beach’s Ocean Boulevard on April 13, 2024. But the northbound lane of the boulevard from 16th Avenue North to 9th Avenue North is closed to vehicle traffic throughout the summer every Friday and Saturday from 4 p.m. until 2 a.m.
Bozell said the sales were shy of $5,000 a night before the weekend traffic plan started and around $1,750 nightly after March 8.
Those sales tallies translate to staff raises and summer jobs. But now, Bozell said he's operating at less than half the staff that he should be as summer approaches.
In the past, Tiki had six or seven servers and at least three bartenders by early March, Bozell said. Now there are three servers and one or two bartenders.
It was the same as last year, he said, except for the traffic plan started weeks earlier this year.
The traffic plan started last April shortly after a shooting on Ocean Boulevard near the SkyWheel and 12th Avenue North.
“It didn’t help. They, the police, said it slowed down traffic and increased response time. But it didn’t help with safety. All this is doing is losing me business and losing a bunch of people their livelihoods. And, the definition of insanity is obviously doing the same thing over and over expecting different results,” Bozell said. “I truly believe it has the reverse effect. I think it kind of invites riffraff with dark streets and the police everywhere, so it looks like we are under siege. I got sucker-punched out there and the traffic pattern was in place. This is crazy. Your little traffic pattern here didn't stop it.”
Myrtle Beach police officers watch traffic from the closed section of Ocean Boulevard between 8th Avenue North and 9th Avenue North on April 19, 2024.
Bozell worries some fellow business owners’ days are numbered just as he worries about the future of Tiki and LaCantina. Both Tiki and LaCantina are on the east side of the boulevard and have access from the sidewalk and the Myrtle Beach Boardwalk.
Bozell said he and other business owners were not told the traffic plan was starting three weeks earlier than in 2023 until they saw the cones and barricades going up on March 8.
He added the business owners aren’t expecting an all-or-nothing approach from the police.
“It’s too early. It starts at 4 on Fridays,” he said. “Make it 8. Seriously, I would jump up for joy if they even did that. That would, maybe, get my numbers back up and I could bring in more staff with just those four hours.”
Chris Starling of the Myrtle Beach Police Department had originally announced the plan was effective every Friday and Saturday from 4 p.m.-2 a.m.
He added the plan has been implemented a few Sundays from 4 p.m.-2 a.m. “due to increased vehicle and pedestrian traffic.” Starling did not specify what tips the scale to being “increased vehicle and pedestrian traffic."
Starling said the Summer Emergency Vehicle Access Plan (SEVAP) goals include increased response time, giving officers unobstructed visibility as well as allowing officers to be proactive with traffic and safety concerns.
Myrtle Beach police have closed the section of Ocean Boulevard between 8th Avenue North and 9th Avenue North on April 19, 2024.
“The traffic plan does not affect pedestrians or access to any business,” he said, repeating a Police Department Facebook post that said secondary streets and parking lots are accessible during the SEVAP plan. “SEVAP is pre-staged at all times, so it may be quickly implemented and removed when needed. The primary use will continue to be on Friday and Saturday nights, but when needed, it is another tool we can utilize on other nights to provide a safer environment for residents, visitors, and businesses.”
Entrenched on the boulevard and in the business community, Bowery owner Victor Shamah said he’s heard of numerous businesses closing earlier than usual on weekends because the customers aren’t around.
And, he said, he lines up with Crowder and Bozell about the summer traffic plan hurting business.
“I understand we need to have it on some weekends. The question is when it’s called for and when it’s not called for,” said Shamah, who has been running businesses on the boulevard for decades. “But, yes, it is hurting business. And 4 o’clock is too early.”
Perched at the corner of the boulevard and 9th Avenue North, Shamah said he hears the same question from tourists walking near his Peaches Corner towards the Bowery.
“They want to know what happened. They ask what’s going on, something bad, when they see the police and roadblocks,” he said. “We need the police. Anything that’s not orderly is disorderly. Enforce the laws. I’m very pro-police.”
Shamah said he is concerned watching people walking toward Withers Drive to catch their Uber rides rather than getting in the vehicles on 9th at the boulevard intersection.
And, he added, his business concerns jump the 8th-9th block area toward the Tiki and Crowder’s Baywatch.
Shamah owns a parking lot between 7th Avenue North and 8th Avenue North. He said since the traffic plan began, he has noticed a drop in parking business because traffic seems to be turning before it reaches his lot.
“I pay a lot of taxes. I live here. I have never felt less business ownerly in my life,” Crowder said.
Two women walked by the bar’s open door pointing toward Ripley’s.
“I think I’ve seen my Friday night rush if you can call it that. I probably won’t see anyone else except locals until the bars close up there and they come walking back wanting something to eat,” Crowder said. “This is not how it’s supposed to be.”
He snuffed out his cigarette and took another look up and down the boulevard before shaking his head.
