Locally Speaking

New Life Coming To Former Waccamaw Pottery Near Myrtle Beach

An investment group has bought the property known as Waccamaw Pottery with plans to revive the former shopping hub by cleaning up the area and luring new stores, restaurants, entertainment venues and other tenants.

The property off U.S. 501 at Fantasy Harbour, once slated for demolition before the recession to make way for new development, is getting new life under the new owners, 3W LLC, a firm registered in New Jersey that is made up of Chinese and American investors. The firm bought the 52.29 acres from General Electric Credit Equities for $7.5 million, closing the deal on Dec. 30, according to Horry County property records.

“We will gradually bring this thing back to life,” property manager Martin Durham said, sitting in an office in one of the mall buildings. “We are hoping to, over time, open everything back up.”

The change in ownership is the first step in reviving an area that has taken a few hits in recent years, businesses in the area said, with the twice-failed theme park still sitting idle and the lack of attention to keep up the Waccamaw Pottery property, which has spawned more weeds and broken windows than tenants in recent years.

Crews already have pulled weeds and boarded up broken windows in the past few weeks, and area businesses have noticed – welcoming the change to a property they say looked abandoned and scary.

“Aesthetically, it is already looking better,” said Holley McMillen, sales manager at the Clarion Hotel and Conference Center across the street from Waccamaw Pottery, also once known as the Waccamaw Factory Shoppes. “It’s a relief. Any kind of good activity over there can only help this area. This area has really been hit hard lately.”

The buyers found the property appealing because it is in a highly visible location off U.S. 501 – one of the main roads tourists take into Myrtle Beach – and the building is structurally sound, said Alain Wizman, director of commercial real estate for Keller Williams who represented 3W in the deal. Wizman had been working with the group for about a year, but said a trip to China in September with Myrtle Beach Mayor John Rhodes impressed the buyers and helped seal the deal.

The buyers plan to spend about $1 million rehabbing the property, but the transition won’t happen overnight, Wizman said. Keller Williams also is handling leasing of the roughly 600,000-square-feet of space.

“They felt this held a tremendous amount of potential,” Wizman said. “They feel it was a property that could be turned around into a premium product.”

The first new stores could be open by the summer, though it likely will take two years before the buildings known as mall 1 and mall 2 are reopen, Durham said, adding that at least half of the space needs to be filled before it’s viable to open that interior space. The goal is to fill the spaces along the exterior of the property first.

Officials aim to get a mix of tenants, including clothing stores, restaurants, nightclubs and venues with an international flavor, Wizman said.

The shopping complex also will get a new name, one that will incorporate “Waccamaw” to capture the history of the area, he said. Details of the project, including the name and what the renovations will look like, are still being developed.

But the first step is cleaning up the property, which hasn’t been kept up in recent years. That includes landscaping to rid the place of overgrown weeds, fixing broken windows, pressure washing, painting and working on the roof, Durham said. On Thursday, landscaping crews were working in the parking areas.

“This place has had no attention for four or five years,” Durham said. “It was just sort of idle. Everything was idle here.”

The property hasn’t been kept up since about 2008 when the previous owners – also investors in Hard Rock Park – abandoned plans to tear down the mall buildings to make way for a mixed-used development dubbed “Paradise City” and tied into the theme park next door. The theme park only lasted one summer as Hard Rock Park, and the investors abandoned their plans to redevelop the mall property once the park shut down in 2008. The mall was only renting month-to-month and needed some TLC.

“I’m ecstatic,” said Jay Coley, a co-owner of Imaginations costumes and dancewear, one of three tenants at the shopping complex. “It’s exciting to know this won’t be desolate anymore. We won’t have to describe this as being an abandoned mall anymore.” -Myrtle Beach Online-The Sun News

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S.C. Bill Would Bar Foreign Laws

Critics say the proposal targets Muslims

A long list of S.C. lawmakers plan to send a message to Palmetto State courts: Don’t apply foreign laws here.

A proposed law, which a House panel will consider next week, is part of a growing movement in legislatures around the country.

Twenty other states are considering similar measures to ban judges from applying the laws of others nations, particularly in custody and marriage cases. Three states – Tennessee, Louisiana and Arizona – already have added the laws to their books. Oklahoma put it in its state Constitution in 2010, a move now being challenged in federal court.

Proponents say the S.C. measure will ensure only U.S. and S.C. laws are applied in Palmetto State courtrooms, and foreign laws do not trump constitutional rights guaranteed to Americans.

Opponents say the proposal addresses a nonexistent issue and, while not specifically naming Islamic Sharia law, smacks of anti-Islamic sentiment. They say such bills target the practice of Sharia, a wide-ranging group of Islamic religious codes and customs that, in some countries, are enforced as law.

While Sharia law provides followers of Islam guidelines on everything from crime to politics to hygiene and food, many Muslims also disagree on its interpretation.

State Rep. Wendy Nanney, R-Greenville, the bill’s sponsor, said she introduced the proposal after speaking with several family court judges around the state about problems with child-custody cases.

“I asked them if they had issues with custody cases decided outside of the country. They all said ‘Yes,’ ” Nanney said, adding one judge told her of a custody case brought before him that originally had been handled in Venezuela. The judge, who Nanney declined to name, said he struggled to find common ground between S.C. and Venezuelan laws, and how to apply them.

“It would simplify things to say, ‘We’re in a South Carolina court, and let’s use South Carolina law.’ It’s meant to help our judges not to be pushed and pressured and prodded to enforce other countries’ laws,” Nanney said.

Nanney said her bill does not target Sharia law or any other specific foreign code or law. Her proposal has 27 House co-sponsors, including House Majority Leader Kenny Bingham, R-Lexington, and 26 other Republicans, who control the General Assembly.

A similar bill was introduced in the Senate last year by another Greenville Republican, state Sen. Mike Fair. It failed to clear the subcommittee level.

Subcommittee members sent a letter to the state’s family court judges to gauge whether Sharia or other foreign laws were impacting S.C. custody and divorce cases.

“We heard no indication from any of the judges that there was a problem,” said state Sen Larry Martin, R-Pickens.

Liberal groups, including the S.C. Progressive Network, say the proposal is a waste of legislative time.

“I’m much more concerned with laws being imposed by aliens from the Planet Oz,” said Brett Bursey, the group’s director. “A stealth-alien invasion of the minds of our legislators is the most plausible explanation for their obsession with fixing things that aren’t broken.”

But proponents of the legislation, including the American Public Policy Alliance, point to several court cases as proof that Sharia law is seeping into the U.S. court system.

In one 2009 example, a New Jersey judge denied a Muslim wife’s request for a restraining order after she claimed her husband repeatedly raped her. The court said the man thought it was his religious right to have nonconsensual sex with his wife and, therefore, he did not meet the criminal-intent standard needed to issue the restraining order.

An appellate court reversed the ruling in 2010, granting the restraining order. –Myrtle Beach Online-The Sun News

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Theme Park In Myrtle Beach Likely Won’t Reopen For This Summer

The former Freestyle Music Park likely will stay closed for a third consecutive summer as time is running out for a new operator to come in and get it ready by the time tourists start rolling in, experts said.

There’s only three months before the traditional kick off to the summer season in May, not leaving much time for a new owner or operator to close a deal on the 50-acre park off U.S. 501 in Fantasy Harbour, rebrand it, possibly change it by adding new rides, line up required ride inspections and do whatever else needs to be done before the park - which has been closed for two and a half years - is ready to greet visitors.

“The possibility of that is remote at best,” said Tom Hiles, a consultant on the project.

FPI US LLC, the mortgage holder that reclaimed the park property through the Horry County foreclosure auction in August, had aimed to find a buyer or group to operate the park in time for this summer. Talks with interested groups continue, and FPI still is confident the theme park could work under the right operator, said Franklin Daniels, a Myrtle Beach attorney who represents FPI.

“There are continued discussions [with interested groups],” he said.

In December, FPI US filed paperwork with Horry County showing it had mortgaged the property for $20 million with Ysanne Trading Limited, a firm based in the British Virgin Islands. Daniels said that money is needed to cover the expenses associated with the property, including security, power bills, consultants and maintenance workers who regularly run the rides to keep them in shape. It’s such a large amount to ensure FPI has enough until the property is sold without having to go through the process again, he said.

“They needed a credit line for helping pay the expenses of the limited operations they have until it is sold,” Daniels said.

Some remain optimistic the park will be back for 2013.

“It’s at least a year down the road, best case scenario,” said Alain Wizman, director of commercial real estate with Keller Williams in Myrtle Beach who has been talking with prospective buyers. “In my opinion, it’s impossible to do at this time [for this summer].”

But it has been done. FPI MB Entertainment LLC bought what was then Hard Rock Park out of bankruptcy in February 2009 for $25 million, rebranded it as Freestyle Music Park and opened by Memorial Day that year. But the park was short-lived, operating only for one summer before falling into financial troubles amid the recession. The park hasn’t operated since then.

Though the Freestyle owners pulled off an opening in three months, some say it’s not something that should be tried again, especially because the park has been closed for much longer this time than when the Freestyle owners bought it about six months after it closed. The park still employs a maintenance worker to regularly run the rides to keep them in shape, Daniels has said.

“The last group that tried that was ineffective in their attempt,” Wizman said.

If the park were to reopen, it would be a second shot in the arm for an area that’s felt neglected in recent years with the closed theme park not luring visitors to the area and the run-down property once known as Waccamaw Pottery and the Waccamaw Factory Shoppes, which houses only three tenants.

But new life is in the works for the former shopping center. A group of investors bought the former Waccamaw Pottery for $7.5 million with plans to gradually bring in new stores, restaurants and entertainment venues and rehab the property. Neighbors have said that work – including landscaping and boarding up busted windows – already has improved the area and made it seem safer.

A few new stores could open there by the summer, though it will take up to two years before the full mall reopens, officials have said.

Those plans won’t influence the theme park’s timetable, officials said. The theme park isn’t connected to that property anymore – Hard Rock Park owners once had planned to demolish the shopping center to make way for development including lodging properties and stores that would tie into the theme park. The down economy took that planned project, dubbed “Paradise City,” off the table.

Still, bringing new life to the area, as the new owners of the Waccamaw Pottery aim to do, helps, Hiles said.

“Anything you do in that area would be a plus,” he said. “There is no doubt about it.”

Some experts have said that a theme park, especially one in that location miles off the beach, isn’t a viable project for the Myrtle Beach area, where tourists come to spend their time on the beach all day, not at a theme park, they said. And the park’s failures – twice under two different owners – might turn off prospective investors, they say. The owners have learned lessons from the park’s two failed seasons, Daniels has said.

Amusement parks such as Family Kingdom and The Myrtle Beach Pavilion Amusement Park, which closed after the 2006 season, have worked here because they are smaller parks right off the beach where tourists could walk to and spend a few hours – not a whole day – and pay much less, said Jay Coley, a co-owner of Imaginations dancewear and costumes, the only store open at the former Waccamaw Pottery that has daily hours.

“I don’t think that would ever be an amusement park that will work,” he said, pointing toward the former Freestyle Music Park. “It’s a bad location. I don’t think it will ever make it.”

But others say it can work; it just needs the right operator and a better economy than what the others faced.

“I think it is an extremely viable project,” Wizman said. “The two attempts that were made were not planned as well as they could be. But with the right tools, it could be an extremely successful project.” -Myrtle Beach Online-The Sun News