Beer and coffee aren’t the only things brewing at Myrtle Beach’s Tidal Creek Brewhouse. Co-founder Adrian Sawczuk's expansion plans include a pickleball complex at the beach and a location in downtown Georgetown.
The pickleball complex will be next door to the brewhouse in Myrtle Beach's Market Common. It will include six outdoor and four covered courts. Each of the courts will be regulation sizes of 20 feet by 44 feet. The courts will be built on the open land around an abandoned building next door to the brewery on Knoles Street and Shine Avenue. The abandoned building will be renovated to house a bar, kitchen, a small brewery system, a coffee roaster, office space and storage. The brewhouse, which includes outdoor seating and a dog park, sits on about 1.3 acres. The property next door is on about 1.4 acres.
“Someone's like, ‘Have you done a market study for the demand for pickleball?’ I'm like, ‘Yeah, I'm aware of what's going on the world. That's my market study,’” Sawczuk laughed. “It obviously allows us to have another offering, another food venue and another bar and more space. The other thing that's important is giving our teammates the opportunity to grow with us. It gives them a lot more roles, more responsibility.”
Sawczuk and his wife Dara are also planning on offering crowdfunding opportunities to employees, which they call teammates, and the public in a few months. Crowdfunding allows people to buy shares in the company and become owners in Tidal Creek business ventures.
The brewhouse has about 30 teammates and Sawczuk said 10-20 will be brought on board with the pickleball complex. He said the name of the complex will be Tidal Creek Pickle House and it's slated to open in 2025. A side door of the abandoned building that will be leased for 20 years bares the mark of the area's Air Force past – “We make it happen TAC Contracting” is etched around a shield with Uncle Sam’s hand shaking a civilian hand.
The Market Common sits on the footprint of the former Myrtle Beach Air Force base. The base officially closed in 1993. The nearly 4,000 acres have been redeveloped into a central business district, parks, housing developments and the home of the Myrtle Beach campus for Horry-Georgetown Technical College.
He said the pickleball complex will have instructors and host tournaments.
“It's not nonprofit enterprise. The prices will be reasonable. I think it's probably $20 per person per hour. That could change because we’re still planning though,” he said. “We’ll have open play. And obviously, the price is going to vary based on time of day and the covered courts will be more expensive than the non-covered. You can make a little money on pickleball, but the money's going to be from food and beverage and tournaments.”
The city of Myrtle Beach has agreed to allow the Tidal Creek owners to use a tax credit for abandoned buildings to support its renovations of the facility facing Shine Avenue. The credit incentivizes developers to rehabilitate vacant buildings.
The Shine Avenue building has been vacant since 2016, according to city records. The next steps, Sawczuk said, are to get the renovation plans approved by the city’s Community Appearance Board and complete the necessary permitting before renovations can begin.
Source: https://www.postandcourier.com/myrtle-beach/news/myrtle-beach-georgetown-brewery-speakeasy-pickleball/article_c42553a2-7375-11ef-9f2f-f3e99173a4a5.html