This makes me very sad. Myrtle Beach is very special to me and my family. We love going there just as much as we love going to Disney World. The Pavilion will be sorely missed. This is almost like taking the castle out of Magic Kingdom.
I hope that they put something other than a hotel or condo in its place. Something that everyone can enjoy - whatever that may be.
Here is the link to the story:
Myrtle Beach Pavilion Closing
And here is the story if you don't want to go to the link directly:
Posted on Fri, Mar. 10, 2006
PAVILION WILL CLOSE AFTER THIS SEASON
So long, old friend' By Dawn BryantThe Sun NewsLong before Broadway at the Beach or Barefoot Landing, the Myrtle Beach Pavilion Amusement Park - just steps from the beach - is what tourists came to see.
Stephen Gardner, a Greensboro, N.C., native, remembers walking four blocks from the Holman Harbor hotel to the rides. Even the memory of getting sick after too many whirls on the Tilt-a-Whirl is a fond recollection.
"I was going to that Pavilion when I was 4 years old coming here on vacation," Gardner said. "It was just the highlight of my day when I got to go up to the Pavilion. I'm very saddened by the news. I think I'm not alone in my feeling that it is a historical mainstay of Myrtle Beach."
Come summer 2007, the heart of Myrtle Beach won't be the same.
The news came Thursday, when park owner Burroughs & Chapin Co. Inc. announced that this would be the last summer for the Pavilion. The 49 rides, Attic teen nightclub and oceanfront arcade will close for good in September after what will be a highly publicized "Farewell Season."
What will replace the park hasn't been decided. B&C also didn't say what will happen to the rides or whether they might show up at other B&C properties.
"This is something I had hoped wouldn't happen on my watch," said Egerton Burroughs, chairman of B&C's board of directors. Burroughs fought back tears during the news conference. "The Pavilion is a big part of Myrtle Beach. It is like blood running through our veins."
The Pavilion has been a place where vacationers got soaked on the log flume, screamed as they plunged down the 110-foot drop on the Hurricane Roller Coaster, shared funnel cake and talked trash across an air hockey table.
For some, it was where they got their first job, had their summer fling or had a chance meeting with the person they'd eventually marry.
Harriett Hurt, 61, of Columbia met her future husband on the Pavilion's dance floor. Though she knew about the possibility of the Pavilion closing, the news shocked her Thursday.
"It won't look like Myrtle Beach," said Hurt, who works at the University of South Carolina. "It just won't have any local character, flavor. I guess I'll still have the memories and old photos."
Pavilion fans say Myrtle Beach will never be the same once the park is gone, regardless of what ends up occupying the 11 acres the Pavilion covers. Some fear Myrtle Beach will become more like Miami, with rows of high-rise condos and without the character that has made the town a unique destination.
"We all share the same heartbreak," said Jack Thompson, a local photographer who worked at the Pavilion in 1951 and lobbied to keep the park from moving. "It is a shame to see that fade for future development with no redeeming family value ... You cannot stop progress, but it is a sad commentary to see the Myrtle Beach Pavilion Amusement Park bow to the wrecking ball after what it has meant to the development of Myrtle Beach."
No doubt the Pavilion's closure will spark change, said Brad Dean, president of the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce.
"It's more than just an amusement park. It's an icon for the Grand Strand tourism industry," he said. "This is going to force other changes. What they are, we don't know ... This destination will evolve."
Uncertain future
Many questions remain. What will replace the park? What will Myrtle Beach's identity as a destination become once its most recognizable symbol - one that has greeted tourists every summer since 1948 - is gone?
What will happen to other downtown businesses without the mainstay anchor?
All of that is still up in the air.
Charleston firm LS3P is working on a plan for the Pavilion property, but it won't be finished for a couple of months. The goal is to create a mix of lodging, shops and attractions that will lure people downtown year-round, not just during the warm-weather months when the Pavilion operates.
There's one thing B&C President Doug Wendel is pretty sure of. The arch-topped oceanfront building, where the Pavilion's magic started more than a half-century ago, won't survive, though some had speculated a piece of it might.
"It is a concrete bunker," Wendel said. "It is not very efficiently used. My guess is it will not be there."
The new development will be done in phases and take several years, according to B&C.
Neighboring business owners wonder what will happen to their livelihoods without the park, which is an anchor for downtown.
"You hate to lose that kind of a landmark," said Bobby Owens, general manager of the four Ripley's attractions on Ocean Boulevard, including the Believe It or Not! Museum across the street from the amusement park. "It's going to be a big hit for the community. You really don't know what is going to go back in there."
B&C officials said the Myrtle Beach Downtown Redevelopment Corp., City Council and other downtown property owners need to work together to achieve the goal of year-round activity along Ocean Boulevard.
The redevelopment group asked B&C in 2001 to move the park, four years after pleading with B&C for the park to stay. B&C had announced in 1997 that the Pavilion would move to one of its newer developments, Broadway at the Beach, an outdoor shopping and entertainment complex. City officials feared the impact that move would have on the downtown.
After years of wondering about the park's future, Chris Walker, who owns several small businesses near the Pavilion, is glad something has been decided.
"I've been ready to move forward for six or seven years now," Walker said. "People are just kind of concerned. You don't like to see a little change, and this is a huge change."
A long history
The Pavilion debuted in 1902 as a single-story, wooden dance hall on the oceanfront. That building burned down. The current building and the first rides opened in 1948. Its appeal has been passed through the generations, with parents who visited the park as kids now bringing their own children.
Cheryl Godwin of Charleston, W.Va., is one of those loyal visitors. She's been vacationing at least once a year in Myrtle Beach for more than three decades, as a teenager years ago and now with her 7-year-old daughter Julianne in tow. "I'm disappointed that she won't be able to have the same memories of the Pavilion as I do," Godwin wrote in an e-mail Thursday. "It was something special from my childhood that I was looking forward to sharing with her. ... I don't think my daughter would think that condos and shopping would be a fair replacement."
B&C has been working with the city's redevelopment corporation on a Pavilion plan for years, with little progress.
In January 2005, a California developer tapped to come up with a plan, Barry Landreth, resigned under pressure after questions surfaced about his credentials and finances. The project has struggled to get going since Landreth left town.
About 850,000 people visited the Pavilion last year, B&C officials said. The park's peak was in 1999 when 1.2 million people passed through the gate.
The company has had to subsidize the park's operation, Wendel said, but he declined to say how much.
One of the worst years was 2000, when B&C fenced in the amusement park and added a $5 entry fee. It didn't go over well. The fee was gone the next year.
Walker said B&C hasn't added enough new games or kept up the property, which contributed to the decline.
"They have done nothing to step up and make it profitable," said Walker, who owns the Nightmare Haunted House, Mad Myrtle's ice cream shop and an old-time photo place. "To not have it at all is not that big of a leap. They might as well close it."
Businesses have been bracing for the park's final season. They just didn't know it would be this year.
"B&C has got to do what B&C thinks is best for their organization," said Buz Plyler, owner of the Gay Dolphin Gift Cove, another Boulevard staple. "It is an experiment that may be a bad thing in the long run. ...This made Myrtle Beach what it is."
The park opens for weekends a week from today. Special events to mark the "Farewell Season" are in the works.
"They need to keep it where it's at," tourist Nick Anthony of Lincolnton, N.C., said as he stood along Ninth Avenue North beside the park. "That's part of the history of Myrtle Beach. It ain't going to be the same."
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I even had to put .25 in the curse jar here at work b/c I said something nasty about it!
Myrtle Beach does not need another shopping complex. Is it too late to stop this before it happens? This is NOT progress! 
Where will I play skee ball? I'll have to go to MB this summer, but its just not going to seem the same.
