Talks of bringing permanent barricades to parts of Ocean Boulevard are off the table for now. At last city council meeting, council members and the police chief talked about putting up permanent, decorative railings along the sidewalk.
The City got so much backlash from business owners along the Boulevard that now they are ditching the barricades to focus on sidewalk improvements and partnering with merchants on a downtown “makeover.”
City Manager John Pedersen said he met with multiple business owners over the past two weeks who told him they were worried the barricades would turn away customers. Now the city is looking into funding for a project that would replace and widen parts of the existing sidewalk by five feet.
The city also announced a plan to work with business owners to revamp downtown. “Merchants have asked us to consider some other options that are not as economically devastating to them as they believe putting in the barricades are,” City Manager John Pedersen said. “And we’ve agreed to work with them to see if we can make that plan work rather than have two different ideas of how to achieve that.”
Some of those business owners got together and formed a merchant task force, and during Tuesday’s council meeting they unveiled their plan for making-over the downtown in 90 days.
Council members and business owners agreed something significant has to be done to improve the reality and perception of the Boulevard. Usually they have different ideas on how to achieve that, but Tuesday they agreed to work together to figure out how to best balance public safety with business needs.
“We all have the same goal but different visions,” said business owner Larry Bond. “And what we put together is something I believe is gonna be something incredible.”
Bond owns Bondfire Restaurants, the group behind joints like Art Burger, the Chemist and Gordo’s. He gathered other Boulevard business owners, and they came up the 90-day plan—starting with branding 1st to 16th Avenues North as the “Ocean Walk.”
“We have Marshwalk in Murrells Inlet, it’s on the marsh,” Bond said. “Riverwalk in Conway that’s on the river. And we have Ocean Walk in Myrtle Beach that’s on the ocean.”
Rebranding plans include painting murals on sidewalks and buildings, installing solar powered trash cans and adding lights to the palm trees between 8th and 9th Avenues.
The City now has to look at which improvement ideas do and do not work. “We agree to look at and give this a try,” Pedersen said, “to really work together as a team rather than one side looking like it was in opposition to the other.”
The owner of the Bowery, Victor Shamah, had this message for council members Tuesday:
“Try it. If it doesn’t work, we erase some stuff and we try something else. We won’t know unless we try.”
Bond said some business owners have verbally agreed to put forward funding, but there is not yet a concrete payment plan.
This is something very early in the works, and News13 will keep you updated throughout the coming months on how the city and merchants continue to work together.