Among the plans:
Marathon Development Group of Norfolk, Va., wants to build 400 condos on five oceanfront lots it bought for $6.05 million in July.
La Casa Real Estate Development LLC of Winston-Salem, N.C., wants to build 300 condos and a parking deck on four oceanfront lots and a second-row lot it bought for $4.5 million in October.
Myrtle Beach developer Strand Capital Group is working with Mike Kelly, whose family helped establish Atlantic Beach in the 1930s, on a 141-condo project called Pearl Villas that would stretch from the oceanfront to the second row.
Kelly is also working with Myrtle Beach developer David O'Connell to build 10 beach cottages on five oceanfront lots, three owned by Kelly's family and two purchased by O'Connell in December and January for $1.725 million.
Smaller companies with solid track records are buying property blocks away from the beach for condos, homes, restaurants and offices.
Millions of dollars worth of projects are scheduled to start in the next year, transforming the town's now-vacant oceanfront. Developers say that kind of money won't put up with the crime and blight that have plagued the four-block town to varying degrees in the years since desegregation.
"It's going to change," said Donnell Thompson, owner of a Durham, N.C., construction company that is building homes in Atlantic Beach.
"It's simple math," Thompson said. "You can't invest the kind of bucks that are being invested in this beach land and allow prostitutes to walk by your front door and drug deals to take place on the corner."
Loyd Daniel, managing partner of Strand Capital Group, said development would have a dramatic positive effect for the town.
"The drug problems and crime would be cleaned up in short order," Daniel said.
A slew of problems
Other factors beyond crime have hindered development in Atlantic Beach in recent years:
Oceanfront lots were owned by individual families who did not want to work with their neighbors on condo projects or other developments.
More than three-fourths of the town's land owners don't live in Atlantic Beach, according to Horry County property records. That means a majority of property owners can't vote in town elections and have limited say in the decisions made by town government, including how development will occur.
The ineffective town government - marked by a revolving door of town managers, including three in the past year - struggles to pay its bills and has thwarted previous development plans.
An underlying reason for the lack of development, according to previous town managers such as Carolyn Montgomery and Charles Williams, is a distrust of outsiders, particularly white-owned development groups.
Atlantic Beach, which is surrounded by North Myrtle Beach and the ocean, was established in the 1930s as a place where black tourists could visit the oceanfront during segregation. Black entrepreneurs opened hotels, restaurants and shops in Atlantic Beach in the ensuing years, and the town received its municipal charter in 1966.
Some residents today say development plans presented by white business owners would erode the town's culture and history.
Kelly - whose father was a founding member of the Atlantic Beach Co., which established the resort area in 1934 - scoffs at that notion. Kelly is one of the biggest proponents of working with developers.
"These people who talk about history don't own property here, they haven't been here since the beginning," he said. "Atlantic Beach is my family's history, and I want this place to be so much more than it is right now."
Development disdain
Williams, a former town manager who resigned in October, said he felt pressure from some council members not to work with developers who recently have bought property on the oceanfront.
Williams did not name the council members but said, "It's not Miss Lance and it's not Miss Taylor," referring to Councilwoman Charlene Taylor and former Councilwoman Gloria Lance, who lost her seat in the November election. The other council members are Jake Evans, Sherry Suttles and Mayor Irene Armstrong.
"I got tired of hearing that I was turning the town over to white folks," Williams said. "These developers are terrific guys, and they want to do quality development. There's resentment that they have been able to acquire property in Atlantic Beach. I got tired of being portrayed as an Uncle Tom."
Armstrong said she encourages development "because that's the only way Atlantic Beach will be able to survive."
Armstrong said race plays no role in her decisions about how development will take place.
"We need diversity, that's what it's all about," Armstrong said. "You can't pick and choose who your neighbors are, that went out the window a long time ago."
Kelly said he agrees the town can only be saved by new development, regardless of the developer's race.
Kelly, who is black, is working with white-owned Strand Capital Group to build a 141-unit, gated condo project on the south end of Atlantic Beach's oceanfront. Strand Capital Group is a hotel and condo developer, with projects such as the Bay Watch Resort that borders Atlantic Beach on the north end of town.
Daniel, Strand Capital's managing partner, said the town offers "a wonderful beach; it certainly is the pearl of the Strand."
There are challenges, however. Utilities need to be upgraded, Daniel said, and developers want the town to open Ocean Boulevard to traffic coming from and going to North Myrtle Beach. Access to the road is blocked at both ends of Atlantic Beach, a throwback to segregation.
"The town doesn't have a high tax base and there's not a lot of money to operate with, but development of the oceanfront could change that fairly easily and dramatically," Daniel said. "The problems can be overcome. We're looking forward to participating with Mike [Kelly] in that development."
Kelly is also building 10 oceanfront cottages with O'Connell, a white real estate developer. And Kelly plans to build an office complex with Strand Capital on land his family owns along U.S. 17, which runs through the middle of the town.
Kelly said he hopes to start the projects by June.
"Atlantic Beach needs to be an international, multiracial community to thrive," he said.
'It's all one big beach.'
The zoning is in place for development in Atlantic Beach, and there are no height limits on the oceanfront condo projects.
The town's planning commission is working on a master plan for Atlantic Beach, which will be a wish list for the types of development town leaders hope to attract. That should be completed by July, Armstrong said, and building permits could be issued soon afterward.
Representatives of Marathon and La Casa say they are moving deliberately to ensure their projects mesh with a master plan the town's planning commission is creating.
"We don't want to go in there and just build anything like anybody else would and then move out of town," said Jason Dodd, vice president of marketing for Marathon, which purchased five oceanfront lots between 30th and 29th Avenues South for $6.05 million in July. "We want to work with the town and do it right."
Dodd said Atlantic Beach is attractive because it has the last stretch of undeveloped oceanfront along the Grand Strand.
"It's nice to find some raw land where we could start from scratch," he said.
Marathon has plans to build 400 condo units in an undetermined number of oceanfront towers that Dodd said will be built so residents of second- and third-row properties will still have ocean views.
Dodd said he knows crime and race previously have been issues with development in the town, but "the ocean is the ocean and once you get on the beach you don't know if you're in Atlantic Beach or Myrtle Beach."
"The days of drawing lines in the sand are gone," Dodd said. "It's all one big beach."
La Casa plans to build 300 condo units on its four oceanfront lots and a parking garage on its second-row property, according to Cliff Rickard, the company's director of development. Rickard said prices will start at about $400,000 per unit.
Rickard said the hundreds of new homeowners who buy into the oceanfront condo projects will spur gentrification throughout the town.
"They're going to be looking for services, such as nice restaurants and stores, so everything will fall in place over time," he said.
Dodd said he agrees new development will help solve many of Atlantic Beach's crime and blight problems.
"The more streetlights and more people around, the less crime there will be," he said. "With new development and new interest and new people coming to the area, certainly that will take care of a lot of the problems."
Neighborhood pride
Donnell Thompson, the 47-year-old owner of a Durham, N.C., construction company that bears his name, grew up in Lumberton, N.C., and vacationed in Atlantic Beach as a child in the 1960s.
Thompson said he decided last year to buy a home along the Grand Strand and originally looked at condos in the Barefoot Resort project in North Myrtle Beach. It was during one of his house-hunting visits that Thompson took a detour through Atlantic Beach and realized he could build a home near the oceanfront for the same price as the condos he'd been considering.
"I thought it would be a challenge, but I've been able to approach challenges head on all my life, and I thought it would be very good if I could be instrumental in the process of turning Atlantic Beach around," Thompson said. "This place is certainly worth the chance."
Thompson said he plans to live in the house his company is building on 31st Avenue South. His company also is building single-family homes and condos on other lots Thompson recently purchased in Atlantic Beach.
Thompson said he remembers a more vibrant Atlantic Beach during the summers he visited as a child.
"I didn't see the drugs," he said. "People took a lot more pride in the area."
Thompson said the development planned for Atlantic Beach will help clean up the town because new residents making significant financial commitments for their homes will hold elected officials more accountable than the absentee landowners who previously neglected their properties.
"You are getting highly educated people purchasing land in a community that is just as good or better than Barefoot," Thompson said. "Every tax-paying resident who has spent decent wages for their homes will be sitting in the council offices and talking to police and using any means to rectify the unhealthy behavior that is in our community."
Thompson is trying to organize a neighborhood watch program to help police fight drugs and other illegal activity.
"When citizens are empowered, they can make a difference," Thompson said. "I'd love to get as many people as possible, but I'll be happy even if it's only eight or 10 people. This town is four streets. If we can get two people on each street to participate, we can be successful."
Even if his initial efforts come up short, Thompson said improvements inevitably will occur because of the town's changing landscape.
"Development is in the air," Thompson said. "I think Atlantic Beach is going to make us all proud."
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