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.”