Guy Fieri's Flavortown Is the Downtown Myrtle Beach Headline. The Real Story Is Six Blocks Over on 9th Avenue North.

Two projects opened within a month of each other this spring and summer, and if you only read the press releases, you'd think downtown Myrtle Beach had turned into a single, continuous entertainment complex. Guy Fieri's Downtown Flavortown took over the old JC Penney at Myrtle Beach Mall on June 10, a 50,000-square-foot operation with seating for 400, more than 100 arcade games, duckpin bowling lanes, a Freaky Tiki bar, and over 60 televisions. A few weeks earlier, Ole Smoky Distillery and Yee-Haw Brewing Co. opened a 40,000-square-foot combination distillery, brewery, and live music venue at Broadway at the Beach, the first South Carolina location for either brand and the first time the two Tennessee companies have shared a building anywhere.

Both are real, both are big, and neither one is the thing that will change how you spend a Tuesday night if you already live here.

That's happening six blocks over, on 9th Avenue North, and it's a smaller, quieter story that tells you more about what kind of downtown Myrtle Beach is becoming.

Two Tracks, One Summer

Winna's Kitchen, the breakfast and lunch spot known around downtown for its lemon ricotta toast and shrimp and grits, opened a second location on 9th Avenue North this year while owner Jess Sagun renovates the original Main Street spot. A few doors down, Boteco VIP brought Brazilian food and a livelier bar scene to the same stretch, joining The Dolly Llama and The Tasting Room on 9th, both of which had already opened in 2025. None of these are 40,000-square-foot anything. They're the kind of places built to survive on regulars, not tour buses.

Set the two tracks side by side and the difference in intent is obvious:

Both tracks are legitimately part of what's happening downtown this year. But only one of them is sized for someone who already has a Myrtle Beach address and wants a shorter wait on a Saturday morning.

The Building That Explains the Pattern

If you want the clearest example of what's actually being rebuilt downtown, it's not a new restaurant at all. It's an old one coming back from the dead.

Dagwood's Deli opened in 1988 and expanded in 2003 with the addition of Bumstead's Pub next door, at 400 Mr. Joe White Avenue. For 37 years it was the kind of place service industry workers gathered after a shift, where the sandwiches came jumbo-sized and the antique wooden bar spanned the width of the room. It closed on August 30, 2025.

Dave Goodbread was a regular there for most of those years, and when the space came open, he didn't want to see it become someone else's concept.

"I was a very, very regular there and I didn't want it to turn into anyone else's hands."

Goodbread spent more than 20 years working in restaurants in New York and Myrtle Beach, most recently as general manager of a local oceanfront grille, before opening Big Dave's Chews & Brews in the same building this summer. The layout is largely the same. The antique bar is still there. What changed is the theme, from English pub to American sports bar, with 40 TVs, a 100-inch screen, pool tables, and dart machines, food running until 1 a.m. and the bar open until 2. It's the kind of continuity you only get when the new owner was a customer first.

That's the pattern across 9th Avenue North this year: not outside operators testing a market, but people who already knew the neighborhood filling gaps the neighborhood actually had.

What the Zoning Map Says About the Bet

The building doesn't sit in this stretch of downtown by accident. Main Street, Broadway Street, Oak Street, and 9th Avenue North fall inside the city's Arts and Innovation District, a downtown zoning designation adopted in 2020 that also happens to sit inside a federal Opportunity Zone. That combination is why a 300-seat theater is going up at 807, 809, and 811 Main Street, three buildings dating to 1938, including the former Helen Mates Dress Shop, the old J&J Drug Shop, and the original Broadway Theater. The city broke ground in July 2024 in partnership with Coastal Carolina University, and the project qualified separately for historic tax credits because it preserved the original structures rather than demolishing them. The venue is targeted for a grand opening this summer, with a lobby, a performers' lounge, dressing rooms, and a rooftop patio.

A university-backed theater with guaranteed recurring use isn't a once-a-year gala booking. It's the kind of infrastructure that assumes people will keep coming back on ordinary weeknights, which is a different bet than a 400-seat entertainment complex built to pull weekend traffic off the highway.

Both bets are real. The theater and the small-plate restaurants on 9th Avenue North are the ones that assume you live here.

The Fall Calendar Worth Planning Around

If you're downtown through the fall, three dates are worth knowing before they surprise you.

Myrtle Beach Bike Week Fall Rally runs September 25 through October 4, ten days of rides and events that will change parking and drive times around the boardwalk corridor whether or not you're participating. Britfest, the Grand Strand British Car Club's annual show, takes over a chunk of the same general area on October 3. And the Myrtle Beach Jazz Festival, now in its 10th year, runs free live music downtown October 16 through 18, which is a better weekend than most to walk 9th Avenue North instead of driving past it.

None of these compete directly with the restaurant openings, but they overlap in timing with a season when downtown is visibly busier than usual, and knowing which weekend is which makes it easier to decide when to eat out and when to stay six blocks away from the crowd.

What This Actually Tells You

The easy version of this story is that downtown Myrtle Beach is booming, and technically that's true. But boom is a word that flattens two very different things happening on the same six blocks. One track is built at a scale designed to pull people in from outside the city, and it will do that job well. The other is a slower, smaller rebuild led by people who already had a stake in the neighborhood before they opened anything, replacing what closed with something that fits the same gap.

If you've lived downtown for a while, you've probably watched this happen in pieces without connecting it: a groundbreaking here, a construction fence there, a new storefront on 9th Avenue that seemed disconnected from the one before it. This year, several of those pieces landed close together, and the pattern underneath them says something specific about the kind of downtown this is becoming. It's not one story. It's two bets running in parallel, and the smaller one is the one that will actually shape your week.

If you're weighing whether downtown Myrtle Beach still fits the way you want to live, or you're curious what a home near this stretch of the Myrtle Beach market actually looks like right now, Coastal Beach Homes knows this neighborhood block by block. Start Your Coastal Home Search whenever you're ready to talk specifics.