‘This is my downtown’: How this group is helping make Myrtle Beach a better city
As day broke over the back alleys of Myrtle Beach on a recent Saturday morning, Pierre Owens hustled along Ocean Boulevard picking up buckets worth of trash leftover from a busy tourist night.
With a trash picker in one hand and a 5-gallon plastic bucket in the other, Owens sported a bright yellow shirt as he strolled the backstreets of downtown Myrtle Beach, homeless individuals stowed away in street corners sleeping and garbage strewn in parking lots, stairwells and bushes.
Within a half-mile radius, Owens dumped his bucket of garbage about five times.
As he hit the Boulevard, he greeted early morning commuters, woke the homeless, sanitized trash receptacles, notified his superiors of any graffiti or damage, and collected more garbage littered on the ground, ranging from beer cans and cigarette butts to food scraps and face masks.
Owens did this for eight hours.
“It feels real good to do something positive. I’m helping a lot of people out here, and this is my downtown, so I gotta keep it clean,” Owens said. “If you live here and you see how it looks, you’re going to want to do something about it.”
Owens is one of 12 members employed to serve as Gold Cap Ambassadors, a pilot program Myrtle Beach recently launched to provide daily, year-round hospitality, outreach, cleaning and safety services in areas east of Kings Highway between 21st Avenue North and 14th Avenue South.
As the city aims to revitalize the downtown, officials approved the near half-million-dollar program with the hope it will improve the perception of both cleanliness and safety. The program, which is operated under parent company Block by Block and managed by the city’s Downtown Development Office, had ambassadors officially hit the streets on Aug. 5.
Currently, Block by Block has ambassador programs in over 100 districts in about 30 states, including New York, Nevada, California, Connecticut, North Carolina and Texas. South Carolina also has a program in Columbia.
While ambassadors have only been working for about a month, officials say they can already see a difference. Brian Schmitt, executive assistant for the Downtown Development Office, said the ambassadors are a tool that will benefit the city in the long run.
“Firsthand I’ve seen a dramatic improvement,” Schmitt said. “I don’t ever remember driving on Ocean Boulevard and not being able to see a few pieces of litter here and there, but if you follow in the wake of an ambassador you will experience their handiwork.”
The program currently has a budget of $449,000, with funding supplemented through parking meter revenue. Essentially, visitors spending time in the downtown area are ultimately paying for the added layer of cleanliness, hospitality and safety, Schmitt said.
“The perception is that it’s tax money, and it’s not, it’s the parking revenue from the downtown, that’s how this is funded,” Schmitt said. “This gives us an opportunity to use a dollar revenue from people parking and spending money downtown to keep downtown the cleanest and safest.”
‘There’s so much trash it’s unbelievable’
Operating out of the old First Presbyterian Church of Myrtle Beach on Kings Highway between 13th and 14th Avenue North, ambassador Jeremy Trendle and morning supervisor Joel Trout meet to discuss the outlook for the day and check that all radios are working as Trendle begins his afternoon shift.
On that particular weekday, Trendle is assigned the north entertainment boundary, which spans the east side of Kings Highway between 8th Avenue North and 16 Avenue North. The 40-block radius the program oversees is broken down into six territories: south hotel, north hotel, south entertainment, north entertainment, central downtown, and arts & innovation.
With his radio ready, instructions received and bright yellow shirt on, Trendle grabs his sanitation cart containing a large garbage can, a trash picker, brooms, gloves, several sanitation products and an array of tools as he begins his eight-hour shift in near 100-degree weather.
Within minutes of hitting the streets, Trendle grabs a scraper and cleaner to remove a sticker he’s found on a stop sign near Chester Street. Before he can remove the sticker, Trendle takes a photo to send his boss. Once removed, another photo is taken and sent to his superior, which will ultimately go to the city to track the ambassadors’ progress.
Over on Withers Drive, Trendle finds two more stickers on another stop sign — stickers he said are often replaced soon after being removed.
“I found one of these on a 2nd Avenue stop sign,” said Trendle, a retired Indiana EMS worker who relocated to Myrtle Beach last year. “The first week whatever graffiti we removed you could tell it was the same individual doing it because they went back and retraced their steps.”
Trendle began his trek down Ocean Boulevard where he spent the remainder of his shift picking up trash, sanitizing pedestrian signals and the dozens of trash receptacles in his boundary, while also preventing them from overflowing. He also greeted business owners and offered guidance to tourists in need of directions or a place to eat.
While an eight-hour shift outside in the South Carolina heat, drenched in sweat, could deter one’s motivation, Trendle’s lively personality never faded as he moved from trash can to trash can. He said the positive response from business owners and tourists, along with the satisfaction of protecting the environment, keeps him going, even in moments where people aren’t very kind.
“There’s so much trash it’s unbelievable. And people will scream at me to pick up trash or deliberately throw trash at me to pick up,” Trendle said. “But I know what I’m doing is for a good cause. It takes a big person to do this job.”
‘Our ambassadors are out there to be friendly’
In July, Myrtle Beach officials entered into negotiations with Block by Block to launch the program coined Gold Cap Ambassadors. With 12 ambassadors on staff, the goal of the one-year trial is to significantly improve service, safety and cleanliness on the sidewalks and streets in the downtown by identifying and quickly addressing issues.
Schmitt stressed the importance of ensuring problems are handled so visitors and residents can feel comfortable when traveling into the downtown area. He said the program is focused on cleaning areas beyond the Boulevard and boardwalk, including back streets and alleyways.
“The perception of the safety and cleanliness of our downtown doesn’t begin on Ocean Boulevard, it doesn’t begin on the Boardwalk, it begins when you start shopping around for your parking space in the third row,” Schmitt said. “To come to a parking meter only to find broken glass and weeded parking areas and right-of-ways, that begins your perception of downtown.”
Dressed in bright gold and navy uniforms, the ambassadors, made up of locals from across the Grand Strand, are tasked with providing services seven days a week for up to 18 hours a day. Shifts range from 6 a.m. to 12 a.m. Friday and Saturday and 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday.
Each worker is assigned one of six territories spanning the 40-block radius to monitor, with four to six ambassadors working a typical shift with a different set of responsibilities.
The morning shift is focused on homeless outreach, removing weeds from public areas, reporting graffiti and addressing sanitation issues, while the afternoon and evening workers offer hospitality and business services, in addition to cleanliness and safety.
“Each morning our city staff hits the boardwalk at 3 a.m. cleaning, sweeping the streets, and the trash crew comes in, but ambassadors now have the opportunity to create that experience all day,” Schmitt said. “So it gives the chance for anybody to come downtown and experience that moment of cleanliness and perception of safety folks at 9 a.m. got to experience.”
Furthermore, ambassadors are responsible for building relationships with stakeholders to offer hospitality services and further enhance the reality and perception of personal safety for residents and tourists. Those services can include offering a friendly greeting or assistance, providing directions and recommendations on things to do and see, answering questions and identifying customer service opportunities, such as carrying packages or holding a door.
Ambassadors are further tasked with providing care, compassion and important resources about New Directions and other local programs to members of the homeless community.
To help improve safety, workers are directed to be the eyes and ears for the police department by reporting actual or suspected criminal activity, while also advising those committing low-level offenses, such as littering or illegal parking, that they could face a fine if caught.
“Sometimes they listen and sometimes they don’t,” Trendle said after advising a motorist parked in the median on Ocean Boulevard that he could face a $700 fine if he didn’t move. While that driver opted to stay put, another down the road moved immediately.
“What really sets us apart from a standard safety, security or janitorial company is the fact that our ambassadors are out there to be friendly, they’re out there to help the general public, and they’re task is to be out there meeting people,” Gold Cap operations manager Mike Snow said. “We’re trying to be friendly and hospitable and help our guests, visitors and business owners to make downtown Myrtle Beach a friendlier, safer and cleaner place to be.”
Salary for an ambassador starts at $13 per hour with paid holidays. The city doesn’t determine pay or salary; Block by Block is contracted to handle everything from hiring, training, benefits and more.
‘They’re going to be very vital to our tourism’
Since before Mayor Brenda Bethune’s reign, she had been researching how other high-volume cities and towns, such as Las Vegas, Nevada, and Orlando, Florida, maintain a strong sense of public safety and awareness, while balancing its hospitality needs.
When elected, Bethune brought her research and advocacy for an ambassador-type program to the city’s attention, as well as the impulse to want to revitalize the downtown business community from an abandoned, run-down area into a family-friendly destination for both residents and tourists.
“Before I even ran for mayor, there were a lot of discussions about safety on the Boulevard,” Bethune said. “We can’t always add 100 new police officers, that’s just not feasible, so I really wanted to research what are things we could do, in addition to adding additional police officers.”
Columbia, which has utilized Block by Block’s services since 2002, launched its Yellow Shirt Ambassador program as the downtown underwent a major revitalization project.
“We refer to it as the bedrock of everything we do to revitalize downtown Columbia,” said Matt Kennell, CEO and president of the area’s City Center Partnership. “It provides a safer and cleaner environment, and it’s so safe and clean that it’s really brought business into the area.”
Prior to the program’s implementation, the downtown was essentially deserted with about 50 vacant storefronts, no new development in nearly 15 years, a mere few hundred residents and it was a hub for crime. Within six months of the program in place, Kennell said the difference was substantial.
Now, nearly 20 years later, the area is cleaner and safer, thousands have inhabited the downtown, there is less crime and the business community is booming with new development and far fewer vacancies that fill up immediately.
“We’re really proud of what we’ve done,” Kennell said. “The feedback we get is that people want to continue the ambassador program. It’s really helped over the years.”
Columbia currently has 12 ambassadors responsible for 36 blocks. The program is in effect everyday from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., with about three to six ambassadors on the street at any given time, but more during special events.
Over in Wilmington, North Carolina, their program, called MSD Ambassadors, has been in place since the start of the year, with six ambassadors and one operations manager responsible for 70 blocks in the downtown area.
“They’ve been doing a great job,” said Dane Scalise, chairman of Wilmington Downtown, Inc. “Our focus was clean and safe as general principles. We wanted to supplement the efforts of our city staff to make sure they weren’t immediately needing to respond to something our ambassadors could respond to on their own.”
With portions of downtown Myrtle Beach losing its appeal over the years, city leaders have been eager to redevelop specific areas as part of the Downtown Master Plan. The Master Plan, which was approved last March, aims to bring change to four districts: Oceanfront, Kings Highway, Historic Main Street and an Arts District.
While the downtown district still has several vacant storefronts, work has been underway over the last year to revive the Superblock, now known as the Arts & Innovation District, into a walkable, mixed-use destination for both residents and visitors to enjoy. The district includes approximately 56 acres along Main Street, Broadway Street, Oak Street and 9th Avenue North.
With Block by Block’s program officially deployed, Bethune is hopeful the area will regain its luster and ensure visitors feel safe and welcome.
“You look at the back streets right now and alleyways are so much cleaner, the weeds are gone,” Bethune said. “I think we need to ensure our visitors that there are people on the streets at all times to help them, answer questions and to keep them safe. They’re going to be very vital to our tourism.”
While some can argue that the city already has a plethora of law enforcement officials and city staff to do this work, officials have said the ambassador program is not meant to replace police or the current level of services the city already provides, but to offer an additional layer of effort to help improve the downtown.
“With the influx of visitors we see in the summer, the Boulevard is our main tourism area, so it has to be kept clean,” Bethune said. “We have to raise the bar and raise our standards for what we want that area to look like, and that’s exactly what the Gold Caps will do.”
‘My downtown is a lot better’
The ultimate goal of the program, aside from attracting visitors and business, is to inspire both business owners, motorists, residents and tourists to care more about the community, deter crime, and use the appropriate means to throw away garbage and clean up the area.
“We want the ambassadors to be down there inspiring the use of simple things like using the trash properly and disposing cigarettes properly,” Schmitt said. “We want the businesses to take that kind of pride, so leaving a graffiti tag on your building for a day just shouldn’t be acceptable.”
While launched as a one-year pilot program, officials hope its success will lead to other funding opportunities. Another idea being discussed is creating a business improvement district, or BID, where the business community can pay an additional tax to fund projects within its boundaries.
The designation aims to introduce desirable improvements, whether it be cosmetic or transformative, that will benefit that particular district as well as the municipality. Multiple BID’s can be created within a city or town, but it is often created by a particular business community when a municipal budget is unable to fund desired projects.
But funding the ambassador program for years to come will be determined upon its success.
“We are very closely monitoring the success of the program and will continue to do that next summer,” Bethune said. “I believe that it will be (successful), we’ve seen that in many other cities that we have talked to and researched, so that is something we will decide how it will be funded moving forward.”
As it stands, the program is set to expire next August unless the contract is renewed.
While officials have options to consider and decisions to make, members of the ambassador program are simply focused and motivated to going above and beyond to inspire change, improve the city’s image and give tourists a valued experience during their vacation.
“I understand that it gets overwhelming when you have a long busy day in the hot sun,” ambassador Owens said. “But at the end of the day, you see the streets are clean and more people are appreciating what you have done and everybody is always waving, and everybody’s looking a lot happier now that the streets and my downtown is a lot better.”
This story was originally published September 4, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
