Downtown Myrtle Beach Spends October Outdoors While Its Next Chapter Gets Built

Where is the new restaurant on Ninth Avenue North? Where is the new gallery on Broadway? Anyone who walks the Arts and Innovation District this fall will have trouble finding a business that opened there in 2026. In August, WMBF reported on a newly approved city program that will reimburse certain fees for new tenants who move into the district or onto Broadway Street. That is a program built to fill storefronts, not a sign that they are already filled.

Downtown still has plenty going on. Its October simply sits in Plyler Park, at Nance Plaza and in the courtyard at Charlie's Place, where nearly every event is free and held outdoors. Until the tenants and the theater arrive, the calendar is what keeps people coming downtown. Laid out by day of the week, it looks like this.

Plyler Park carries the weekends

The Myrtle Beach Downtown Alliance runs Fright Nights at Plyler Park every Friday, Saturday and Sunday from October 2 through November 1, and the series closes with a Day of the Dead celebration on November 1. The Alliance's own description sets the tone:

Everything is free, everything is outdoors, and none of it is designed to scare anybody.

Each night has its own format. On Franken-Fridays, strolling Halloween characters arrive at 5 p.m., and fire performers and a live band take over from 6 to 8. The rest of the month's bands are Ntranz with pop, rock and Top 40 on October 9, Corey Luetjen Band with country and Southern rock on October 16, Worthy of Dawn with rock, reggae, soul and jam on October 23, and Gray Heat with modern rock and alternative on October 30.

Saturdays are stage nights with one headline show each week. Glow and Flow Night brings laser shows with fire and LED performers on October 10 and again on October 24. MaddMatt's Halloween Balloon Bonanza returns on October 17. Halloween falls on a Saturday this year, so October 31 becomes the Halloween Carnival, with a DJ, games, contests and performances.

Sundays run on an earlier clock. Slime Sundays go from 1 to 4 p.m. and fill the plaza with green foam. The Alliance recommends bringing a towel and a change of clothes, and it says that adults get soaked too.

Nance Plaza takes the middle of the week

Fright Nights has the oceanfront end of downtown, and Nights at Nance has the Kings Highway side. The Downtown Alliance books local and regional acts on the Nance Plaza stage at 825 North Kings Highway. The city's announcement tells guests to bring beach chairs. The series alternates by week. Wednesdays are DJ Music Bingo and Thursdays are a live band, both from 6 to 8 p.m.

Four dates remain. DJ Music Bingo is on October 14 and Neon Moon plays on October 15. DJ Music Bingo returns on October 28, and on October 29 Tru Sol Band headlines the annual Halloween Boo Bash, which runs longer than the usual nights, from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m.

The overlap matters. The Boo Bash on Thursday the 29th leads into Gray Heat at Plyler Park on Friday the 30th and the Halloween Carnival on Saturday the 31st. Halloween week downtown is three free evenings in a row, spread across two public venues about a mile apart.

Broadway and Ninth Avenue, between ArtWalks

The district's steady draw is still F1rst Friday ArtWalk. The Alliance hosts it from 5 to 8 p.m. around Broadway Street and Ninth Avenue North, with local art, shopping, food and live music. October's ArtWalk took place on the 2nd. The next one is November 6.

The businesses that host ArtWalk have been around for a while, and that track record is the real news on these blocks.

• Kaleidoscope Artisan Collective at 915 Broadway St. opened in spring 2024 under owner Joe Kohler. When WBTW covered the opening, 31 artists were showing work there.
• Boteco VIP at 503 Ninth Ave. N. is run by Fabiana Oliveira, who told WMBF in August 2026 that she had spent nearly two years in the district.
• Winna's Kitchen at 507 Ninth Ave. N. moved into the city-owned space after Le Manna Bread closed in spring 2025. Owner Jess Sagun opened it there as a second location. The Sun counted it among the restaurants that opened in 2025.

The city wants more businesses like these. Its storefront program reimburses certain city fees for new tenants in the Arts and Innovation District and along Broadway, and its façade-improvement matching grants are open to commercial businesses anywhere in the city. In July, the Downtown Alliance invited residents and business owners to Gallery 320 at 320 Broadway St. to share ideas for reviving the Broadway corridor.

Charlie's Place is back on the calendar

The newest recurring event downtown takes place at 1420 Carver Street, at one of the most historic addresses in the city. According to the city, Charlie and Sarah Fitzgerald ran Charlie's Place as a nightspot from the late 1930s to the early 1960s. Before integration, it gave Black performers a place to play, and the acts on its stage included Dizzy Gillespie, Little Richard, Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington.

The city brought Charlie's Market back on Saturday, September 19, with local vendors, music and family activities from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. WPDE covered that first day and quoted organizer Shunnika Going-Friends, who said the organizers hope to make the market a regular event. The second edition came less than two weeks later. The free Pink Out Breast Cancer Awareness Edition ran from 5:30 to 8 p.m. on Friday, October 2, and overlapped with ArtWalk. The city hasn't published a set schedule yet, so check its weekly Friday Fax bulletin for the next date.

What is being built behind the stage

The free calendar fills the evenings now, and three projects will decide what downtown looks like once Fright Nights is over.

The largest is the 300-seat theater that the city and Coastal Carolina University are building inside the renovated buildings at 807, 809 and 811 Main St. In January, the Post and Courier reported that construction was four months behind and that the planned summer opening had slipped toward the end of the year. A city update dated September 1 still expected completion by the end of 2026. CCU will run the venue and cover its operating costs. The lease calls for at least 150 performance days a year, plus 100 days available to outside groups. That adds up to roughly 250 scheduled days a year on Main Street, compared with the handful of nights a month that ArtWalk and Nights at Nance provide today.

The second project is Ocean Boulevard. The Downtown Alliance is collecting ideas for the stretch from Seventh Avenue North to 12th Avenue South, which includes Plyler Park, and it has scheduled four public sessions:

1. Monday, Oct. 5, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., a listening session in the third-floor conference room at Homewood Suites, 520 North Ocean Boulevard
2. Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2 to 4 p.m., on the second floor of the Schooner Building at Compass Cove, 2311 South Ocean Boulevard
3. Thursday, Oct. 8, 10 a.m. to noon, back at Homewood Suites
4. Monday, Oct. 12, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., back at Compass Cove

The third is a delay. In a September 14 update, the city said work on Ninth Avenue North had been postponed until fall 2027. As a result, the street that hosts ArtWalk will keep its current layout through at least one more round of fall programming.

Altogether, the schedule runs on two clocks. The theater is due by year's end, the Ocean Boulevard sessions run through October 12, the Ninth Avenue work waits until 2027, and the fee reimbursements are waiting for tenants to claim them. In the meantime, the bands at Plyler Park and Nance Plaza play on schedule, with Gray Heat closing out Franken-Fridays on October 30.

Downtown's changes will shape what homes across the city are worth over the next few years, from the theater block on Main Street to whatever comes out of the Ocean Boulevard sessions. If you'd like to know where your home stands as these projects take shape, Liat Edri can walk you through a free home valuation based on current local conditions.