Little River SC Waterfront in 2026: New Businesses and Boardwalk Funding
At noon on July 18, an employee at a new storefront near the Little River waterfront flipped a switch, the "Open" sign buzzed on, and Mz. Freeze became the newest business on a strip that has run almost entirely on seafood for decades. Co-owner Ron Gaddis and his wife Bobbie Freed cut a ceremonial ribbon with oversized scissors borrowed from the Little River Chamber of Commerce, and just like that, you could get a milkshake within walking distance of the docks for the first time in memory.
Horry County has restored $7 million toward a boardwalk project for the Little River waterfront. Along Waterfront Avenue and Mineola Avenue, recent additions include Mz. Freeze and a tiki bar at Mako's. The county’s boardwalk project is also part of the waterfront’s changing picture.
If you've eaten your way down the Little River waterfront, you know the menu by heart: Crab Catchers, Captain Juel's Hurricane, Seabrisa's Waterfront Seafood. Good food, but not a lot of variety once you're past the raw bar. Mz. Freeze changes that math. It's a straightforward ice cream and milkshake counter, open noon to 9 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and 1 to 6 p.m. on Sunday, which puts it right in the window when families are wrapping up a day on the water and looking for something that isn't fried.
The name is a nod to Freed's own nickname. As Bobbie Freed told MyHorryNews, "There's nothing on the waterfront like it." That's not a marketing line. It's an accurate description of a waterfront that has been almost entirely seafood-and-cocktails for as long as most residents can remember. A dessert stop sounds small until you notice it's the first non-seafood food business to open directly on this stretch in recent memory.
Mz. Freeze wasn't the only new storefront to open in Little River this summer either. A few miles up Highway 17 South, Tiny Tigers Kids Co. held its own grand opening on August 1, adding a new kids-focused business to a part of Little River that has mostly been restaurants and marinas. Small, yes, but two unrelated new businesses opening within two weeks of each other says something about where local owners think the momentum is heading.
A few doors down, Mako's Marina Bar and Grill has added a tiki bar while the county's planning process continues. Owner Steve Martin has been vocal about what he wants the area to become. "Our goal is to create the Little River waterfront, basically marshwalk," Martin told MyHorryNews this summer, referencing the connected string of restaurants that made Murrells Inlet's boardwalk one of the most recognizable stretches on the Grand Strand.
That comparison matters because Little River already has most of the raw ingredients Murrells Inlet had before its own boardwalk went in back in 1998: a working waterfront, a cluster of established seafood restaurants, and a casino cruise boat that's been running since 2014. What it hasn't had is the physical walkway that ties those businesses together into one destination instead of a string of separate parking lots. The tiki bar is one of the businesses a future walkway could connect.
The county's funding for the Little River waterfront project has changed over time. The timeline below lays out those changes.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 2021 | Horry County earmarks roughly $8 million for a Little River waterfront park with a boardwalk, public dock, playground, and kayak launches |
| November 2022 | Council votes 7-5 to redirect nearly all of that money to a proposed equestrian center in western Horry County |
| 2023 to 2025 | The project goes quiet, with no restored funding and no permit filings |
| April 1, 2026 | Council's first FY2027 budget reading restores $3.5 million for Little River, less than half the original commitment |
| May 6, 2026 | Second reading passes 11-1, with the Little River line untouched and Councilman Tyler Servant casting the lone no vote |
| May 19, 2026 | Third and final reading locks the $3.5 million in place, bringing the cumulative restored funding to $7 million |
Councilwoman Jenna Dukes, who represents the North Strand, said the restoration came back in two separate installments because it's hospitality-fee money, not general tax revenue, which meant the county had to work it back into the budget piece by piece rather than simply reversing the 2022 vote outright.
Even at $7 million restored, that's still short of the original $8 million ask, and the money alone doesn't solve the harder problem: Little River's waterfront is split across seven or more different property owners between Captain Juel's Hurricane and Crab Catchers, plus the Big M Casino's dock, which complicates any plan to run a continuous public walkway through the middle of it. Chamber President and CEO Jennifer Walters has been candid that a real boardwalk will need creative routing around the casino boat's operations rather than a straight shot down the water's edge. In other words, the money is real now, but the boardwalk itself is still a planning problem, not a construction one.
The waterfront calendar includes recurring events and seasonal gatherings.
Further out, the 20th Annual Little River ShrimpFest returns to the Historic Little River Waterfront on October 10 and 11, with two stages of live music and more than 100 vendors lining Mineola Avenue. Twenty years running is a long time for any street festival to stay in one place, and it says something about how central this particular stretch of waterfront has remained even as everything around it has changed.
Together, these developments show several changes along the waterfront: Horry County has restored funding for the boardwalk project, Mz. Freeze has opened on Waterfront Avenue, Mako's has added a tiki bar, and ShrimpFest is scheduled to return for its 20th year. Those storefronts and events join the established restaurants and marinas that have long drawn people to the waterfront.
If you spend your Saturdays down there, you can see established businesses alongside recent additions. The boardwalk is still in the planning stage, and any route will need to account for the casino boat's operations. Whatever the boardwalk eventually looks like, the character of the place is already being written one lease at a time.
If you're curious what all this means for property values along the waterfront corridor, or you just want a local's read on where Little River is headed next, Coastal Beach Homes keeps close tabs on this stretch of the Grand Strand. Jan and Dan Sitter track these kinds of changes because they shape the neighborhood as much as any listing does. Reach out anytime you want to talk through what's happening on the water.
When you hire Jan and Dan, you get a team of professional real estate agent diligently working together on your behalf. They are knowledgeable and experienced professionals you can trust to best represent your interests in our unique market.
JAN AND DAN SITTER | COASTAL BEACH HOMES
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