Myrtle Beach hoping to add a caboose to its Train Depot

The Myrtle Beach Train Depot is a national historic site that has morphed into one of the most popular places in the city to throw a party or hold an event.

Now, the city is a finalist for a grant that could make the site even more appealing.

Kelly Mezzapelle, a planner for Myrtle Beach, said the city is working to obtain a grant from the Knight Cities Challenge for train cars, which would be refurbished to create meeting spaces, to put on tracks near the station.

“We’re not sure where they’re all going to come from, they will come from a number of different sources,” Mezzapelle said. “Every time we think about the project, we think of new ideas for the cars.”

She said the city is considering getting a flatbed car that could be turned into an outdoor stage, a boxcar for storage, a passenger or dining car for a meeting room and a caboose that could be turned into a caterer’s kitchen. City staff were inspired in part by The Werk’s Caboose Cafe in Lake City, S.C.

Even as rates to rent the train depot rose this year, Mezzapelle said that it was often booked twice a day as people held Christmas parties over the holidays. One drawback of the existing building, however, is that it does not have a kitchen, and many of the events there, like wedding receptions, require food to be brought in.

“We’re running out of space,” Mezzapelle said.

Now, train cars could supply additional room for events as diverse as meetings and outdoor concerts.

Ironically, though they were once used as transportation, train cars will be difficult to move to the depot. There is no longer a way to get the cars there by existing tracks, because a bridge that once carried train cars over the Intracoastal Waterway is no longer functional. Moving them would involve using a crane at the pickup site to move rail cars onto a truck, driving them to Myrtle Beach, then using a crane again to remove them and place them on tracks.

“We found a caboose that is available to us, free of charge. All we have to do is get it here,” Mezzapelle said. “Transporting these is very expensive, even if they’re rail-ready.”

When the city either buys or picks up donated rail cars, they will then have to deal with all the issues associated with older structures — the cars could contain lead paint or asbestos, and they may not all fit the same type of tracks.

“‘Free’ doesn’t always turn out to be so inexpensive,” Mezzapelle said. While she did not have a specific guess for how much the work would cost, Mezzapelle said the total project would likely cost “hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

However, the re-purposed cars also could be an avenue for economic injection into the downtown area. Mezzapelle said another idea for the cars is to use them as incubators for businesses that would then move into vacant storefronts on Kings Highway or elsewhere near the Five Points Business District, also known as the superblock. The train depot sits just behind the chunk of land, at 851 Broadway St.

John Krajc, the president of the Five Points Business Association, said he thought the rail cars could be positive for the neighborhood.

“It’s gonna add another visual focal point,” he told The Sun News. “I think it’s gonna make Five Points more visually beautiful and bring more positive attention...especially for music and the arts.”

Because of the high cost of the work, however, the city is hoping for a grant from the Knight Cities Challenge, an annual contest that awards funding to projects that attract talented people, expand economic activity or encourage civic engagement across 26 different communities where the Knight brothers once owned newspapers.

Myrtle Beach’s project is one of 144 picked as finalists, out of 4500 applicants. Winners will be announced in the spring. Thirty-seven were chosen last year. Until then, city staff are preparing the detailed budgets and plans that may advance their request to the end.

“Once the application is sent on (Jan. 20), we’re gonna ask everyone to cross their fingers,” Mezzapelle said.

This story was originally published January 17, 2017 at 6:42 AM with the headline "Myrtle Beach hoping to add a caboose to its Train Depot."