Sun Fun lineup biggest yet

Market Common events attract stars

By Lisa Fleisher - lfleisher@thesunnews.com

It may not be on Ocean Boulevard, but the Sun Fun Festival on the former Myrtle Beach Air Force Base is going to be bigger this year than ever.

There will be celebrities - "Hannah Montana" star Cody Linley, American Idol winner Ruben Studdard, and more - a performance from Third Eye Blind, a national personal watercraft championship and a kids play area the size of a football field.

"This will be a banner year for Sun Fun," said Holly McMillan, who organizes the festival for the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce. "It's just going to be awesome."

The chamber's board of directors on Tuesday decided to move all Sun Fun events to the former Myrtle Beach Air Force Base after downtown business owners said it was more important to them to have fireworks and concerts throughout the summer than to keep Sun Fun on Ocean Boulevard.

"If people will give this a chance at The Market Common, they'll see that this will be a great venue for all those events," said Susan Grissom Means, a Myrtle Beach city councilwoman. "People like me who grew up here will understand that these kinds of changes are just coming, and there's not really anything we can necessarily do to change it, and we just have to do what we can to keep this event alive."

This year, the kickoff festival to the summer will be the weekend of June 7. That will include food vendors, boat rides on the lake, hot air balloon rides and inflatable play areas for children.

The chamber will not bring back the parade that it axed last year, because it does not attract enough tourists and costs too much.

"We don't do events unless we know they can get us regional and national publicity, and we know they can bring us" people who stay overnight, McMillan said.

There will still be Sun Fun pageants, held at the Myrtle Beach High School's music and arts center.

The chamber will also give away a 2008 Ford Focus.

"With change, conflict and controversy comes, but this is one change I know - not maybe this year and maybe not next - even locals are going to see the benefit from," McMillan said.

Contact LISA FLEISHER at 626-0317.