What's Actually New At Broadway At The Beach This Summer

If you live in Myrtle Beach, you probably drive past Broadway at the Beach more often than you walk it. The complex has always leaned tourist. Parking gets tight in July, the crowd skews out-of-town, and the tenant mix used to rotate through the same categories of souvenir shop and chain grill every couple of years.

This year is different, and it took a few months of walking the property to see why. The additions rolling out in 2026 are not more retail. They are experience venues built for repeat visits, which is the first time in a while Broadway has programmed anything a resident might actually put on a Saturday calendar twice in the same month.

The 40,000-Square-Foot Anchor On Lake Broadway

The single biggest change opened in May at 1214 Celebrity Circle. Ole Smoky Distillery and Yee-Haw Brewing Co. took over a 40,000-square-foot space that functions simultaneously as a working distillery, a craft brewery, a full-service restaurant, a live music venue, and a gathering place built around one of the largest screens in the Myrtle Beach area.

Both brands come out of Tennessee. Ole Smoky was founded in Gatlinburg in 2010 as the first federally licensed distillery in East Tennessee, and Yee-Haw Brewing operates out of a historic railroad depot in Johnson City with locations in Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge, Nashville, Knoxville, and Greenville, SC. Myrtle Beach is the pair's second joint venue. That distinction matters for a reader trying to guess how the room will feel a year from now: this is not a test kitchen or a pop-up. It is a proven format the operators have already refined elsewhere.

Mayor Mark Kruea told WMBF the project had been on the horizon for a while, saying "it's nice to have the distillery become a reality." The reason to care as a local is what it does to the north end of Lake Broadway after 7 p.m. The lakefront patio, distillery tours, and nightly live music have turned it into "the kind of spot that accidentally turns into your whole evening" according to visitors quoted by Play Golf Myrtle Beach. That is a different rhythm than the property used to run. Evening foot traffic now clusters on the lake side instead of thinning out toward the parking decks.

The Immersive-Retail Experiment

The second shift is stranger and easier to miss if you only drive by. Broadway is testing a batch of small, hands-on retail concepts that behave more like attractions than stores. Melissa Armstrong, marketing director at Burroughs & Chapin, the parent company of Broadway at the Beach, described the additions as "enhancing the incredible lineup of shopping, dining and entertainment experiences."

Here is what has actually landed or been announced, based on the property's own press and the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber's tourism release:

The pattern is worth naming. Families can mix up colorful creations at The Slime Kitchen, forge coins, swords or daggers at Black Flag Forge, browse spooky shelves at Alice's Haunted Little Bookshop, or step into a world of magic at The Cloak & Wand, an immersive fantasy shop complete with wands, potions, and magical creatures. None of these are transaction-first stores. You go in to do something, and the merchandise is a byproduct. That model rewards a return visit in a way a standard souvenir shop never has, which is the piece that changes how a local uses the complex.

Big Fish And The Return Of A Lake Broadway Restaurant

The Liberty Brewery & Grill space on the water has been sitting since 2020. That is a five-year gap on one of the most visible pieces of real estate inside the property, and it has been a running conversation at every Broadway update event since. Big Fish is taking that space, adding outdoor seating and a large deck, and is expected to open sometime in 2026, though the exact date is still unconfirmed.

The scale of the outdoor build is the detail worth remembering. The waterfront restaurant will feature an oyster bar, fresh local seafood, Southern-style fried chicken, and a sprawling 5,000-square-foot outdoor entertainment deck with live music, a 70-seat bar, and waterfront views. A 5,000-square-foot deck reshapes the northeast corner of the lake the same way Ole Smoky reshaped the north end. If both open fully by fall, you are looking at two anchors of evening outdoor programming on opposite corners of the water. That has not been the case at any point since 2019.

The Surf Resort On The Horizon

The most far-out news is not inside Broadway at all. Developers announced plans for a 28-acre surf resort on the corner of Highway 17 and 21st Avenue North. That is roughly a mile from Broadway's front gate. There are no operating details yet, and the timeline has not been made public, so it is best treated as directional rather than dated. Still, if you own in the surrounding zip codes it is a project worth tracking. A resort of that footprint changes traffic patterns, off-season occupancy, and the mix of businesses that survive on the neighboring streets.

A Resident's Rhythm For The Rest Of Summer

If you have not been through the property since spring, the practical order of operations for a first re-visit looks something like this:

1. Start with a Slime Kitchen or Black Flag Forge stop if you have kids or grandkids visiting. They are quick, they anchor the trip in something the kids will remember, and they take pressure off the dinner reservation.
2. Walk the Lake Broadway loop counterclockwise. This puts the Ole Smoky footprint at your back for the first half of the walk and lets you time your arrival for a table when the outdoor bar picks up around 6 p.m.
3. Save the new immersive shops on the New England Fishing Village side for after dinner. Alice's Haunted Little Bookshop and Cloak and Wand are being staged in that quadrant, and both read better at dusk when the string lights are on.
4. Skip a Big Fish stop until an opening date is announced. Trying to eat at a soft-opened restaurant on a July weekend is a losing bet on the Grand Strand.

That order also solves the parking problem. Coming in from the north lot near Celebrity Circle in the late afternoon gets you the shortest walk to the distillery and the earliest look at the shops on the far side of the water when foot traffic thins after 9 p.m.

What This Actually Changes For A Homeowner

The reason any of this matters past a weekend outing is the way Broadway now competes with the beach itself for local evening time. For years, the honest answer to "where do you take out-of-town family after dinner" defaulted to the boardwalk or the Murrells Inlet MarshWalk. The complex was a daytime tourist stop and a nightclub row and not much in between. The 2026 additions fill that middle band. A distillery tour is a plan. A potion bar is a plan. A 5,000-square-foot deck on the lake at sunset is a plan.

Whether the surf resort actually breaks ground on the Highway 17 corner is a separate question. But the property inside the gates has already crossed a threshold this year. It is programmed for repeat visits from people who live here now, not just visitors passing through for a week.

If you have been thinking about buying, selling, or investing anywhere within a short drive of Broadway and want to talk through what these shifts mean for your block specifically, Life in Myrtle Beach is here whenever you are ready. Start Your Life at the Beach.