Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 20, 1995 TAG: 9508180013
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARK MORRISON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: MYRTLE BEACH, S. C. LENGTH: Long
After all, when he arrived at this beach community in 1986, he was an outsider from Missouri, not famous, not profoundly rich, and almost entirely untested in the business of music and entertainment. Basically, a nobody.
And his dream of launching a country music variety show in this vacationland mecca of golf, seafood buffets and rolling surf was met with little fanfare, if not outright skepticism.
To make matters worse, Gilmore picked as a venue for his show a seemingly jinxed building that had housed failed nightclub after failed nightclub. It had been repossessed by the bank, and, at the time, it stood vacant.
Still, he was convinced he could find a niche for himself despite the odds.
In Missouri, he had watched the phenomenal success of Branson, a town that grew from relative isolation
to boast more than 30 music theaters and shows. He figured if these shows could become popular in Branson, where there isn't a ready-made attraction like the ocean, then there ought to be a market for at least one show in a place where there is an ocean. A place like Myrtle Beach.
Gilmore remembered Myrtle Beach from almost 20 years earlier, when he visited the seaside community while in college. A return trip to scout the location again only confirmed what he remembered: Myrtle was a family-oriented place with a surplus of hotels and restaurants and people, but not much to offer after dark except for cruising, carousing and miniature golf.
His answer: the Carolina Opry.
However, Gilmore never intended to turn his newly adopted home on the shores of South Carolina into another Branson. His motivation was less revolutionary, inspired more by a desire to play music than to build an empire.
A singer-songwriter and guitarist, Gilmore, 47, spent several frustrating years early in his career as a nomad musician based in Kansas City, Mo. He peddled some of his tapes to Nashville, too, but couldn't generate much interest.
Then, to help support his floundering career, he went to work for a real estate company. Soon after, he bought the company. Ten years passed. His musical dreams sort of slipped away, but he never entirely forgot them.
When the Carolina Opry opened, it did indeed prove successful, as Gilmore expected. By its second year, the show was selling out every performance. It was the niche he wanted, a place to combine his passion for music with his talent for business. It was enough.
Or was it?
The boom
Encouraged by his success, Gilmore opened a second theater, the Dixie Jubilee, in North Myrtle Beach. The Dixie Jubilee differed from the big-production, variety-show format of Gilmore's Opry by offering essentially an unplugged show of acoustic music. Soon, it was selling out as well.
It wasn't long before others, eyeing Gilmore's operation, moved to cash in on what they saw as a potential gold mine. They included such heavyweights as country superstars Alabama and Dolly Parton. Gilmore himself made plans to build a state-of-the-art theater to replace his original Opry.
The boom was under way.
Today, no fewer than nine major theaters span Myrtle Beach's Grand Strand, and more are on the way. Plus, there is a vast entertainment/shopping complex, anchored by the country's newest Hard Rock Cafe. Together, they constitute a powerhouse industry that is redefining Myrtle Beach.
A drive down Myrtle's main thoroughfare, the Highway 17 bypass, vividly illustrates this dramatic transformation as the road gives rise to towering marquees that light up the night and dominate the drive-by landscape.
In the boldest of colored, flashing lights, they scream: The Carolina Opry, Dolly Parton's Dixie Stampede, Broadway at the Beach, Legends in Concert, the Alabama Theatre - marquees that would seem right at home on the Las Vegas strip.
Accompanying these massive placards are the theaters and complexes they advertise, most of them enormous structures, as lavish in their size and grandeur as the marquees promise. In many cases, they rival the Roanoke Civic Center in size.
Only they're all brand new, cast in tropical hues of pastel pinks, yellows, blues and greens, framed by palmetto trees and illuminated at night with enormous spotlights like royal palaces. Inside, they are similarly upscale, some matching the luxury of a fine hotel; first-class, modern all the way around and - for what they are - beautiful.
\ Myrtle Beach began attracting people to its shore in the early years of the last century, when rice plantations flourished along the South Carolina coast and wealthy landowners built summer homes on the easternmost portions of their vast acreages. In the decades that followed, Myrtle Beach established itself as a legitimate resort town, famous for its wide public beaches and the hallowed seaside Pavilion and amusement park that for decades was the center of summer activity.
But in the 1960s, Myrtle's image as a sleepy beach town began to change.
The reason: golf.
The golf explosion came about when some of the area courses got together and, instead of marketing themselves individually, started promoting Myrtle Beach as a one-stop golfing mecca all its own.
Today, the 60-mile span of Myrtle Beach development known as the Grand Strand boasts more than 85 golf courses. They have helped expand the summer tourism season into the fall and spring.
The new theater push is poised to complete the circle, turning Myrtle Beach into a year-round destination. Already, Myrtle ranks third - behind Branson and Washington, D.C. - in top bus destinations as tracked by the National Motorcoach Network Inc.
Last year, some 12 million people visited the Grand Strand.
There are other signs of this year-round standing, as well. Most noticeable are the dozens of chain restaurants that have opened in recent years - chains such as Applebee's, Fuddruckers and the Olive Garden, which typically stay away from seasonal communities.
Years behind
Building in Myrtle Beach is going at such a breakneck pace that locals have jokingly dubbed the construction crane as the new state bird. According to the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce, $1.2 billion in new construction is under way in the region, most of it related to the theater boom.
Within five years, the number of theaters along the beach is expected to double, said chamber spokeswoman Angel Frantz. Among those who have scouted the location are Lee Greenwood, Crystal Gayle, Eddie Rabbitt, Louise Mandrell, one of the Osmond Brothers, John Davidson and Disney.
The problem is: roads.
Roads in Myrtle Beach already are flowing at capacity, particularly during the summer peak. Frantz said it is practically to the point where they need a bypass for their bypass. Although there are plans to improve the roads, in many cases, long-term solutions are as much as a decade away.
``We are years behind on our transportation,'' Frantz conceded.
To catch up, she said, Myrtle will need to flex its tourism muscle to get more highway dollars. If it doesn't, she warned, instead of its beaches, fairways and theaters, Myrtle could become famous for its traffic quagmire - and for the boom that turned belly-up.
``If we don't keep this golden egg producing, then this is going to hurt the rest of the state,'' she said.
In 1994, tourism along the Grand Strand generated $2.5 billion in travel-related revenue, accounting for nearly 40 percent of South Carolina's total tourism dollars.
The road problem is likely to get worse, however, before it gets better.
By autumn, two new theaters should be up and running: the $8.5 million Ronnie Milsap Theatre and what will be the Grand Strand's biggest theater with 2,700 seats, the $15 million Palace at Myrtle Beach. And there's more.
Also on the horizon is a $500 million development on the site of the deserted Myrtle Beach Air Force Base that would include a Disney-scale theme park called Isle of America, a replica of the U.S. House of Representatives and a 20,000-seat concert amphitheater.
Another amphitheater - this one seating 26,000 - is planned for Broadway at the Beach, where the Palace theater is under construction and where the Egyptian pyramid-shaped Hard Rock Cafe opened last month.
Broadway at the Beach is probably the most ambitious of the major developments now under construction in Myrtle. It also perhaps best illustrates just how much momentum is behind the boom.
The project is being developed by Burroughs & Chapin Co., Myrtle's oldest and largest land development company. When it's completed, the $250 million Broadway at the Beach complex will include as many as five theaters, the amphitheater, some 75 shops, a dozen eateries, 10,000 parking spaces, and a family-oriented nightclub district modeled after a similar strip in Orlando, Fla.
All of it centered around a 23-acre man-made lake.
The nightclub district will feature eight clubs, each offering different kinds of live music. The Hard Rock Cafe offers live music, too. In fact, at its Myrtle Beach location, the company plans to place more emphasis on showcasing up-and-coming new bands than it does at its other locations.
``The Beatles got discovered somewhere, and that's what we'd like to be in Myrtle Beach,'' said Jill Shelhart, a spokesman for Hard Rock Cafe.
There are additional plans at Broadway at the Beach to build a high-definition movie theater with a screen that's five times the size of the standard movie screen, and to build a $30 million sea aquarium - one of three aquariums now being blueprinted for Myrtle Beach.
The others, also in the $30 million range, are planned for a shopping/restaurant development adjacent to the Alabama Theatre, and for yet another development called Fantasy Harbour, where a half-dozen more theaters are in the works.
Empty seats
For some vacationers, who see what is already a hugely crowded and commercial place becoming even more crowded and commercialized, this runaway swell of development is about as welcome as a hurricane.
Angel Frantz at the Chamber of Commerce admits a certain dissatisfaction exists, particularly among longtime visitors whose loyalties eventually might be lost to more placid destinations. Everyone else seems to like what's happening.
``They're like, yoo-hoo! This is great!'' Frantz said.
The numbers say the same thing. Last year's 12 million visitors to the Grand Strand was up more than 2 million people over 1990. Plus, for those who don't like the theater trend, there are sections of the strand that remain relatively unchanged and residential.
With growth at such a fevered pitch, whenever Myrtle Beach's changing landscape is discussed, talk eventually comes around to casinos and riverboat gambling on the Intracoastal Waterway, a small and relatively underutilized canal that snakes quietly along the entire length of the Grand Strand.
Such casino operations are prohibited in South Carolina, though there has been what Frantz termed a ``sluggish movement'' to change that.
``But as far becoming another Las Vegas,'' she said, ``whenever there is talk, the amen club comes out of the woodwork.''
Meanwhile, the shows go on - despite a puzzling plenitude of vacant seats. Over the busy July Fourth weekend, many of the theaters were only half full. If Myrtle Beach is such an entertainment gold mine, why are there so many empty seats?
And why, if there are so many empty seats, are more theaters going up?
Calvin Gilmore has his theories. He likes to use his steakhouse analogy. He said a steakhouse becomes successful not because it's a steakhouse, but because it has good steaks. By the same token, he said, his theaters do well not because they're theaters, but because they have good shows.
He wonders whether other theater prospectors are equally concerned about content and quality - or whether they're using the theaters to anchor larger developments where shopping is the real focus.
Either way, he said, the increased competition has hurt. By year's end, more than 17,750 seats will be available at the various theaters on any given night.
``It would be impossible not to be impacted by that to a certain extent,'' he said. ``The market is overbuilt right now.''
Gilmore hasn't limited himself to Myrtle Beach. In partnership with cable television's Family Channel, he soon will open another variety-style theater in nearby Charleston. He has plans with the Family Channel to open 15 additional theaters around the country during the next seven years.
In Myrtle Beach, however, Gilmore believes the key to filling seats will be marketing, just as marketing was the key to the golf boom. Right now, he said, the marketing effort for the theaters is in its infancy. Until it matures, until there is a more united effort to promote Myrtle Beach as an entertainment center, he believes the future is uncertain.
``I'm not sure how it's going to play out,'' he said.
by CNB