Builder behind $50M Myrtle Beach dorm for international workers says campus in right place

The company behind a planned $50 million international residence hall to open a few blocks from downtown Myrtle Beach intends to to work with civic leaders and cultural groups to ensure the facility and its tenants are being good neighbors.

More than 3,000 J1 students find jobs inside Myrtle Beach every year, and international employees comprise about 4 percent of the city’s overall workforce.

The facility, to be built on 7.6 acres at the intersections of Mr. Joe White Avenue and Robert Grissom Parkway, would operate like a college dormitory with supervision and a secure campus, and rents would come out of workers’ paychecks.

Area improvements would include privately funded stormwater improvements to alleviate existing drainage problems throughout the Harlem neighborhood, a 10-foot wide bicycle path and Coast RTA bus shelter accessible and open to the public. According to blueprints, plans also call for turning improvements off Mr. Joe White Avenue.

Shortly ater city leaders approved construction of the campus, Holtz Builders CEO Dan Bullock offered his perspective to The Sun News on why the city is in need of such a complex.

Q: What’s your response to members of the community who say this facility is going to impact the quality of life in their neighborhood?

A: I would say, hopefully, it will impact the quality of their life in a positive way. We run facilities like this in different places in the country. We are the operators as well. Our brand is International Residence Hall.

Our facility here in Wisconsin Dells, which was our flagship facility, is in its 11th operating year, so we are very experienced in running these types of facilities. The facility here in the Dells, has 1,421 beds. It is full in the summer. It is right across the street from a residential neighborhood and so we take great pride in making sure that we’re running a campus that is run the right way. We are there to be a positive impact on the community. We are there to be a positive player in that community. I think, and I hope that what you’ll find is that students do the same.

Q: Have you or members of your team been in the Myrtle Beach area to scout the location where this facility is being proposed? Why is this site the ideal spot instead of somewhere else in the city?

A: A number of times. I myself have visited five times, and I’ve walked the property twice. It’s good because the Department of State is the governing authority of the J1 program. The J1 program is a cultural exchange program, it is not a work visa program so it has certain parameters under which we need to operate.

The No. 1 objective is to make sure these visiting individuals from 30+ countries have a great experience while they’re here. It’s about building cultural exchange and building ambassadors.

The Department of State requires a few things. One of the things they require is a location that provides a safe and adequate location to and from their destinations, so this is a great location for a couple of reasons.

Its proximity to the people that these students will be serving. No. 2, there are certain bike lanes, walking lanes, that will assist the students in getting to where they need to be going. And third, there is public transportation readily available close by. So it’s about finding a location that is appropriate for the product but as it relates to the desires of the Department of State in how to care for these students, it meets the criteria.

Q: Do you plan to host any public meetings or updates as the project moves forward?

A: We try to run our business with three simple principles: That’s honesty, transparency and integrity. We have to measure our every action we take against those three things, and we do it every day.

In our business, it really comes down to two things: One, taking care of people and two, building relationships, so when we come to a community like Myrtle Beach, we’re focusing on that. We try to engage everybody from the beginning so that everybody’s on the same page from day one.

Q: How is Myrtle Beach going to benefit from this campus outside of the residents who are going to be housed there?

A: It’s economic support, providing of much needed people to help your community in that way. I hope you’ll find the students will be engaged and become a very positive force for your community. The other kind of side benefit that sometimes gets lost is that it fuels economic development.

If you look at some of the places where students are currently, maybe they’re places where if they were invested in, they could become visitor places. The side benefit to all of this is all the properties they’re staying at now that may not be ideal for them or for the community can be redeveloped. It’s the next attraction or the next hotel or the next multi-family for the permanent workers in the area.

Q: Myrtle Beach ranks in the top five nationally when it comes to the hiring of international workers. Why do you think it’s taken so long for a facility of this type to come online here?

A: In places that we go, what we hear most often is that while this has been discussed, there’s never a solution that’s made people go, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s going to work.’ And so I think maybe, if you’re like other communities, it could be maybe that nobody’s put their finger on a solution that works.

We’ve been doing this a long time. We’ve got the system dialed in, we’ve got the design of the buildings dialed in, we’ve got the experience and the happiness of the students dialed in, so coming with a solution that’s already operational, sometimes that’s the missing component.