Grande Dunes Marriott

Burroughs and Chapin Co. Inc is a name that anyone who has spent much time in Myrtle Beach is very familiar with. They own most of Myrtle Beach, I think it would be safe to say. They owned the Pavilion, and the strip of near beachfront land it was on. They developed and own Broadway at the Beach, Grande Dunes, Coastal Grand Mall, Nascar Speedpark, Myrtle Waves, and numerous hotels, golf courses, and other huge projects.

I think they probably owned most of the land that other things are on at one time. They control our politics and most of what goes on with Myrtle Beach as a city. They are probably the single largest owner of Myrtle Beach real estate that exists.

According to an long article in the Sun News, they are now going to expland their interests outside of Myrtle Beach and more into North Carolina, and even Tennessee, Georgia, and Virginia. Is this the Southeast's next version of a corporate Donald Trump?

B & C is also one of the county's biggest source of jobs and employment, in the past providing 1400 full time jobs and 1000 seasonal ones when the Pavilion was viable. Certainly the closing of the Pavilion will change the demographics of our summer workforce. Not sure if this will have much of an impact on the economy here or not. Most of those employees I think were teenagers, and many were imported from Russia and other far-away and sometimes exotic countries.

With our new resort status revolving so much around the high-priced Myrtle Beach condos and golf course villas, these kids would have probably been hard-pressed to find decent housing, so it might be a good thing to reduce their numbers. What most of the vacation rental companies and resorts are doing now seems to be shipping in maid support from places like Jamaica, and piling them into the old leftover beach houses, 10 to 20 deep, and then shipping them home when the season is over. Like the Hispanic populations who make up most of the restaurant staff and landscaping jobs now, it's cheaper and easier to give them the jobs for the season than to constantly be dealing with teenagers and spoiled young local people, I would imagine.

Burroughs and Chapin go on to say that they are often approached by interested parties to sell some of the giant amusement places and shopping complexes, and do not rule out selling anything for the right price. A new CEO, Jim Rosenburg, took over in August, and is the leader in the idea of transitioning over into other areas.

"We're willing to play a different role outside of Myrtle Beach," Rosenberg says. "We're prepared to bring in whatever expertise somebody needs for a joint venture. We're finding that there's families out there that own large tracts of land that don't know what to do with it, and they are starting to hear about us. They know we're a family-owned company and are coming to us knowing we're harmless."

I don't know personally how "harmless" they are or aren't, but it should be interesting to see the company grow and expand in the future, and to see how that affects the massive developments they've contributed to the economy, as well as homes and condos in MYrtle Beach, SC.