LStar purchases Waterway Hills, may expand Grande Dunes

LStar Management, owner of the Grande Dunes development, has confirmed that it has purchased the bordering Waterway Hills Golf Club and an adjoining tract of land.

The company is at least considering expanding the Grande Dunes residential development onto the property, though LStar managing partner and general counsel Steve Vining said Friday no redevelopment is imminent.

“We acquired this land to protect the northern boundary of Grande Dunes,” Vining said in an email. “We have no plans for development at this time and will take a very cautious and measured approach to planning in the future.”

LStar’s purchases total more than 240 acres to the west of the Intracoastal Waterway and north of Grande Dunes, according to Horry County records.

The 181-acre golf course within North Myrtle Beach city limits was purchased this week for $16 million, according to the Horry County Register of Deeds, from a conglomerate of investors that includes the JW Holliday family.

County records show an approximate 61 acres in a doughnut hole of land in unincorporated Horry County was purchased in February for $1.8 million from private owners. The purchasing companies are listed as NGD Property I LLC and NGD Property II LLC.

In January, LStar submitted a rough draft drawing to North Myrtle Beach city officials of their potential plans with the properties, and it largely consists of residential housing – mostly single-family inland and smaller sections of multi-family along or close to a portion of the Waterway on the north side of the property.

North Myrtle Beach city spokesman Pat Dowling said L-Star representatives discussed as recently as Thursday expanding Grande Dunes into North Myrtle Beach as a private and gated community. “We are still in discussions with LStar about the expansion of Grande Dunes into North Myrtle Beach,” Dowling said Friday.

Dowling said LStar representatives suggested a first phase of development could be homes on large lots stretching from well inland to the Waterway along the Grande Dunes border.

“This was a rough draft of one concept of a possible development presented for purposes of discussion with the city; it does not reflect a plan for development,” Vining said. “The planning process typically takes many, many months and will result in many, many draft concepts.”

Waterway Hills remains open. It is a 27-hole course that is managed by National Golf Management, which has a lease on the property that has been renewed annually for the past few years, according to NGM vice president of sales and marketing Steve Mays.

“The lease was assumed by the new property owners, so we are still managing and running the golf course,” Mays said.

Waterway Hills opened in 1975 and its design is credited to Robert Trent Jones, whose only other course on the Grand Strand is The Dunes Golf and Beach Club, which opened in 1949. Waterway Hills is relatively short, with no 18-hole combination exceeding 6,500 yards. The course is perhaps best known for having an aerial gondola ride to the clubhouse over the Waterway from the parking lot off U.S. 17 South.

Waterway Hills was annexed into North Myrtle Beach in October 2008 as part of a 1,363-acre Planned Development District called the Parkway Group PDD that was created by the owners of six parcels of land. It is expected to become numerous neighborhoods.

The Waterway Hills property is in the shape of an ‘L’ if viewed from the east, with the left south side running along Grande Dunes and the bottom east portion running along the west bank of the Waterway. The additional 61 acres sits inside the ‘L’ and is zoned Commercial, Forest and Agriculture (CFA), which allows for a multitude of things including low-density single-family and multi-family homes.

But that parcel would likely have to be adopted into the PDD in order for any development to occur there, and that will presumably require a significant financial contribution to future roads and infrastructure to match what others in the PDD have already contributed.

Further development

A proposed development in the Parkway Group PDD on land that adjoins LStar’s recently purchased property to the north has already passed first reading by the North Myrtle Beach City Council.

Coterra Chestnut LLC, a subsidiary of Coterra Companies in Wilmington, N.C., has a proposal to develop a new community referred to as Waterside. It features a maximum of 212 single-family residential units with minimum lot sizes of 5,000 square feet that are at least 10 feet apart.

The neighborhood would be constructed in three phases. Phase 1 north of Water Tower Road is named Pinnacle Ridge, Phase 2 south of Water Tower Road is called Chestnut Hill, and Phase 3 adjacent to Phase 2 is named Copper Creek and is expected to be a private neighborhood with private roads and a gated entrance.

Dowling said Coterra is a developer that generally purchases land and produces infrastructure for lots, then sells to home builders. It has expressed interest in purchasing and developing several more portions of the PDD.

It’s current proposal may result in the re-routing of Henry Road (aka Old Water Town Road). One access to any Parkway Group PDD development will come off Water Tower Road. The city of North Myrtle Beach built the road to provide access to the planned PDD, and plans call for the road to be expanded to four lanes.

Further expansion

LStar, which purchased Grande Dunes from Burroughs & Chapin Co. in 2013 and has numerous properties throughout the U.S., announced in January it will be building two new neighborhoods in the existing Grande Dunes.

One is a 54-lot neighborhood with a number of its lots adjacent to the Members Club golf course and others overlooking an existing pond.

The other will consist of 164 single-family homes located along the Intracoastal Waterway near the Claire Chapin Epps YMCA and will include part of a 21-mile trail network that will link Grande Dunes to the East Coast Greenway. Construction on the projects was expected to begin between March and mid-summer.

The full connections of the registered companies that purchased Waterway Hills and the adjoining 61 acres are difficult to determine. NGD Property I LLC and NGD Property II LLC are registered with the South Carolina Secretary of State as Delaware companies and have an address in Newport Beach, Calif., associated with their sales agreements.

That address is the headquarters of Pacific Investment Management Co. (PIMCO), a large global investment management firm that is a subsidiary of Allianz Asset Management.

This story was originally published March 27, 2015 at 10:10 PM with the headline "LStar purchases Waterway Hills, may expand Grande Dunes."