Why Ocean Boulevard Is Getting Cars Back The Same Year It's Capping New Bars
August 13, 2026
August 13, 2026
In January, Myrtle Beach's new mayor spent his first meeting in office undoing a rule that had closed Ocean Boulevard to weekend traffic for years. In August, the city's planning commission voted the opposite direction, unanimously recommending a cap on how big any new bar or nightclub on that same street can ever get. Read quickly, those look like a city arguing with itself. Read closely, they're the same decision made twice: Ocean Boulevard is being pulled back toward a normal street, not preserved as a closed-off nightlife zone. And the clearest proof that the strategy is already working sits nine blocks inland, where a stretch of 9th Avenue North has quietly become the place locals actually wait for a table.
If you live downtown, both of these changes touch your week directly, whether you drive Ocean Boulevard on a Saturday night or you've already found your way to the newer tables on 9th.
Mayor Mark Kruea was sworn in on January 13, 2026, after unseating two-term incumbent Brenda Bethune. His first council agenda, published January 9, included a vote to end the Summer Emergency Vehicle Access Plan, the policy that had closed Ocean Boulevard to cars every Friday and Saturday from 4 p.m. to 2 a.m., diverting traffic up to Kings Highway instead. Kruea framed it as responsiveness to what he'd heard on the campaign trail: "We've just spent many months talking about the issues that are important to Myrtle Beach," he said, adding that acting on it immediately would send "the message to our residents and our businesses that we've heard them," as the Post and Courier reported.
Seven months later, on August 4, the Myrtle Beach Planning Commission voted the other way on something that sounds unrelated but isn't. It unanimously recommended an ordinance that would cap any new bar or nightclub along Ocean Boulevard at 150 people, a restriction the Post and Courier covered in detail. One move reopened the boulevard to ordinary traffic. The other closed the door on the boulevard ever hosting another oversized club. Both push in the same direction: away from a strip built around funneling large crowds through a closed street, toward something that functions more like the rest of the city.
The proposal is narrower than the headlines suggest, and the details matter if you're trying to picture what actually changes. The overlay zone runs along Ocean Boulevard between Grande Dunes Boulevard and the intersection with Kings Highway, according to MyHorryNews's coverage of the vote. It doesn't touch restaurants or bars that already exist. It only applies going forward.
| A bar already open and licensed | A bar that opens after this passes | |
|---|---|---|
| Occupancy limit | Keeps its current permitted capacity | Capped at 150 patrons |
| Cutoff date | Licensed by May 12, 2026 | Anything after that date |
| What triggers the rule | Not applicable | Business earning 60% or more of revenue from alcohol sales |
Every bar and nightclub currently operating on the boulevard keeps whatever capacity it already has. Nothing about tonight's crowd downtown changes because of this ordinance. What changes is the ceiling on what gets built next.
The push didn't come out of nowhere. Planning Director Ken May told commissioners the changes were rooted in "past experiences" with defunct nuisance nightclubs downtown, and the underlying worry is about volume at closing time rather than volume during the night. One commissioner put the math plainly during a July hearing covered by WMBF: "Let's say we had 10 nightclubs on Ocean Boulevard that had a capacity of 500, that's 5,000 people being dumped onto Ocean Boulevard." Ocean Boulevard has also seen high-profile safety incidents in recent years, including an April 2025 mass shooting that WBTW reported, and that history sits underneath the council's stated priority on public safety.
Commission member Zeb Thomas III summed up the intent without pretending it's a small move:
"We're not eliminating nightlife on Ocean Boulevard in Myrtle Beach, but we are taking kind of a broad swipe, I admit, to address this particular issue. It is a very important issue for all tourism in Myrtle Beach."
Not everyone agrees this is the right tool. Victoria Tobin, executive director of the Myrtle Beach Area Hospitality Association, called it a solution to a problem that doesn't exist yet: "This ordinance addresses a future hypothetical, not an existing problem." And Myrtle Beach resident Jim Henry took aim at the grandfather clause itself, calling it "the 'Old Boy' network" for letting existing businesses keep higher capacities while blocking new ones from ever reaching that scale. As of this writing, the recommendation is headed to City Council, where a public hearing still has to be scheduled. Nothing is final yet.
While that fight plays out on the beachfront, the city has already put its own money behind a different vision of downtown a few blocks in, and it's worth knowing because it's not a coincidence.
Winna's Kitchen had operated for three years out of a 91-year-old building at 819 Main Street, until a flood and a subsequent leak forced the building toward a teardown and rebuild. Rather than let the business go dark, Myrtle Beach City Council voted in April 2025 to lease Winna's a city-owned property at 507 9th Avenue North, the former Le Manna Bread Company space, on terms reported by MyHorryNews: $2,000 a month in rent, $500 for fixtures and equipment, $375 a month for taxes and insurance, on a five-year lease with an option to renew for five more and a chance to buy the building outright at appraised value in January 2027. Owner Jess Sagun told council the goal was never to get rich off the location. "We're not moving to downtown Myrtle Beach to make a bunch of money, we're moving downtown to make an impact," she said. "It's our true desire to be a catalyst for downtown to be everything it can be."
That's the same year the city is telling Ocean Boulevard no to the next mega-club. It's telling 9th Avenue North yes, on subsidized terms, to a neighborhood breakfast spot.
Winna's isn't building that stretch alone. Boteco VIP, a Brazilian restaurant at 503 9th Avenue North run by owner Fabiana Olivera since August 2024, has become an anchor for the block, open seven days a week with extended hours Thursday through Saturday, as WBTW's Beach Bites segment noted. Visit Myrtle Beach's own 2026 roundup lists The Dolly Llama and The Tasting Room on 9th as part of the same corridor's continued rebound, rounding out the stretch with sweets and a wine-forward option.
This isn't limited to 9th Avenue North either. The Myrtle Beach Downtown Alliance held Broadway Street Revitalization community input sessions at Gallery 320 during the week of July 27 through August 2, 2026, according to the city's own meeting schedule. Whatever comes out of those listening sessions, the pattern is the same one playing out on 9th Avenue North: the city is actively planning what its inland streets become, at the same time it's drawing a hard line on how big anything new on the beachfront strip gets to be.
If you live here, the practical shift is already visible even before council takes a final vote on the bar ordinance. Cars are back on Ocean Boulevard on summer weekend nights instead of getting diverted to Kings Highway. If the occupancy cap clears City Council, any brand-new bar that wants to open on the boulevard tops out at a fraction of what a large club could otherwise hold, while existing spots keep operating exactly as they do now. And the place actually filling up with a wait most nights isn't on the beachfront at all. It's nine blocks in, at tables the city itself had a hand in keeping open.
None of this is really a contradiction. It's one city deciding, through two separate votes in the same year, that a captive nightlife strip isn't the future it wants for Ocean Boulevard, while quietly bankrolling the version of downtown that's already working a few blocks away.
Life in Myrtle Beach keeps an eye on the changes shaping downtown and the rest of the Grand Strand as they happen, block by block, vote by vote.
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