Long 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 turns 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."
The news came Thursday, when park owner Burroughs & Chapin Co. Inc. announced 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."
It was a closely held secret, kept even from City Council members and employees of the amusement park until Thursday morning, when B&C revealed the plan during a news conference at the Grande Dunes Ocean Club.
What will replace the park hasn't been decided.
"This is something I had hoped wouldn't happen on my watch," said Egerton Burroughs, chairman of B&C's board of directors who fought back tears at 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 the chance meeting with the person they would 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."
QUESTIONS REMAIN
What will replace the park? What will Myrtle'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 up in the air.
Charleston design 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.
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," B&C president Doug 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 will take several years, according to Burroughs & Chapin.
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 Ripley's four 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.
In 2001, the redevelopment group asked B&C to move the park, four years after pleading for the park to stay.
B&C had announced in 1997 that the Pavilion would move to one of its newer developments, the Broadway at the Beach 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. People are just kind of concerned. You don't like to see a little change, and this is a huge change."
HANGING IN THERE
The Pavilion debuted in 1902 as a single-story, wooden dance hall on the oceanfront. Fire later destroyed it. 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 bringing their own children.
Burroughs & Chapin has been working with the city's redevelopment corporation on a Pavilion plan for years, with little progress.
In January 2005, Barry Landreth, a California developer tapped to come up with a plan, resigned under pressure after questions surfaced about his credentials. The project has struggled since he left.
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.
Walker said B&C hasn't added enough new games or kept up the property.
"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 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.
"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." | 
