A company that designs and makes props for restaurants, amusement parks, miniature golf courses is moving to North Myrtle Beach where it plans to create 35 jobs.
Little Spider Creations will be paying artists up to $20 an hour. It plans to create the jobs during the next five years.
The owner of the company, Marc Brawner, is relocating the firm from Colorado.
Brawner says the South Carolina location puts the company closer to new customers and that his wife also wanted to relocate to the beach.
But he also says he was having problems in Colorado when too many of his workers there were showing up stoned after that state legalized marijuana.
“The main reason we pulled out was because of marijuana, ” Brawner told KUSA-TV in Denver.
“Marijuana got into our industry. Half of the sculptors will come in high. As soon as we’d catch it, they’d be let go. We went through 25 sculptors. Only five of [our sculptors] either were quality or would show up unimpaired,” Brawner added.
The company’s decision to relocate is estimated to generate a $6 million economic impact for Horry County, said officials with the Myrtle Beach Economic Development Corp.
“We decided to relocate Little Spider Creations to the Myrtle Beach area because the location offers us easy access to current and potential new customers, as well as the ability to tap into new creative talent,” Brawner said.
