One of Myrtle Beach’s downtown oceanfront resorts will undergo a massive transformation.
The Sandcastle Oceanfront Resort at the Pavilion at 1802 North Ocean Blvd. will start renovation in the fall of 2024, re-opening in early 2025. Hotel owner Hybridge Capital Management, a Beverly Hills, Calif.-based investment firm , announced the renovation plan via LinkedIn.
Hybridge Capital Managing Partner Max Mellman said all three towers of the property will receive renovations as part of the project, and the resort will get renamed as part of the transformation of the more than 177,000-square-foot property. Mellman didn’t reveal the new name for the resort, although he said a new name had been picked.
“Myrtle Beach, in general, just has so much potential. I believe, from a macroeconomic perspective, the next 10 years, it’s poised to do very well,” he said. “The cost of living, the cost to travel, everything’s just gotten a lot more expensive, and people are getting pushed out of places like New York and Miami, looking for, you know, beach town to travel to that’s affordable.”
Mellman said the renovation would completely revamp the property, including floors, windows, HVAC and beyond. He added that a new renovation could include a club concept of amenities for the resort across the street from the hotel.
Re-imaging the resort will be expensive, too, as Hybridge Capital Management took out a more than $34 million bridge loan to help finance the project. According to the plan, the 241-room resort will also be re-branded into a Voco by the international hotel brand IHG Hotel & Resorts , the owners of the Holiday Inn. With 64 hotels in Europe, Asia, Africa and the United States, Voco is one of IHG’s premium brands.
Mellman said the resort will still be independently run while licensed as a Voco property.
“IHG is in growth mode, and they understand how optimal this location is and the amount of tourists that come into Myrtle Beach annually,” he added. “They aggressively pursue this transaction.”
The Sandcastle isn’t the only property Hybridge Capital purchased along the Grand Strand. The investment firm purchased The Yachtsman Resort at 1304 North Ocean Blvd. in February 2024 for $13 million. However, a recent policy decision by The City of Myrtle Beach has placed a hold on Hybridge’s plans for the property.
In April 2024, the City of Myrtle Beach placed a temporary nine-month freeze on converting short-term rental properties to long-term ones. The goal was to allow the city to study the impact of a growing trend of property owners converting places to long-term living spaces, which primarily reside closest to the beach between Farrow Parkway and 82nd Parkway .
The city claimed this led to a $5.7 million loss in economic impact for every 1,000 conversions to short-term rentals and that converting properties to long-term rentals led to lost tax revenue. The Myrtle Beach Chamber of Commerce provided the $5.7 million lost in economic impact statistic, then City of Myrtle Beach spokesperson Mark Kruea said in April 2024.
Mellman said The Yachtsman was initially supposed to be converted into a long-term multi-family complex; however, the moratorium stopped those plans and some of the planned renovations to the property. Mellman said his firm is keeping its options open regarding its plans for The Yachtsman property.
He also disputed that converting short-term rentals into long-term ones would hurt city tax revenues, saying the supply of hotels currently available would curtail any risk of lost revenues.
“Getting people to stay in Myrtle a year-long will enhance businesses throughout. There’s a ton of people moving to Myrtle, and they can’t afford to buy a house, so why not live on the beach in a long-term rental?” He said. “I’ve never, in my career, heard of a city preventing long-term rentals. First I’ve ever heard of it, and I understand the premise behind it, but it is having the opposite effect in stopping Myrtle’s growth in general, and it’s sad.”
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