Walk Water Front Avenue this September and you'll notice the new tiki bar behind Makos before you notice much else. Then you'll see the parking lot signs. Then, if you know what you're looking for, you'll notice the Pilot House looks freshly painted for the first time in years. Little River's waterfront is visibly different than it was a year ago. What most residents haven't sorted out yet is which parts of that change are actually finished and which parts are still just a plan waiting on a plan.
That distinction matters if you've been telling friends "they're finally building the boardwalk." They're not, not yet. What's actually happening is faster and smaller than that, and it's worth understanding before Shrimp Fest weekend brings everyone back down to the water.
One Restaurant Owner Didn't Wait for a Plan
Steve Martin owns Makos Marina Bar & Grill, now doing business as Makos On the Water, and he's the reason the waterfront looks different right now rather than someday. His stated goal is a mini version of Murrells Inlet's MarshWalk, the boardwalk where you can walk from restaurant to restaurant along the water. That comparison isn't incidental. It's the model he's building toward on his own timeline, with his own money, one property at a time.
Phase one was the tiki bar behind Makos, completed just before this year's World Famous Blue Crab Festival on May 16 and 17. Phase two, still in progress, is a "Shark Bar" at Makos promising tropical cocktails and sunset-hour music on the water. Along the way, Martin bought the Pilot House, a pub in one of the oldest buildings on the waterfront, and had it repainted. He also bought two nearby lots and added 118 parking spaces, paid, but with a voucher system that lets drivers redeem their parking fee toward food at a waterfront restaurant.
None of that required a county vote or a master plan. It required one business owner deciding the waterfront was worth investing in before anyone finished arguing about how to fund it publicly.
What $7 Million Actually Buys Right Now
The public side of this story moved too, just on a different clock. Horry County restored $3.5 million in its fiscal 2027 budget, bringing the total restored funding for Little River waterfront improvements to $7 million. Councilwoman Jenna Dukes, who represents the North Strand, had been working to get that money back for three and a half years after it was reallocated before she even took office. It's hospitality tax money, not general tax dollars, which is part of why getting it back required budget maneuvering rather than a simple ask.
Here's the part that matters if you're picturing shovels in the ground this fall: that $7 million doesn't have a construction start date attached to it yet. Little River Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Jennifer Walters said the Chamber is working to hire a master planner for the project, and that real progress news is still a while off. Her words were direct about the tradeoff. She'd rather the county take the time to get the plan right than rush a version of the waterfront that has to be redone.
That's not bureaucratic stalling for its own sake. It's a recognition that the last thirty years of talk about redeveloping this waterfront collapsed more than once, partly over lawsuits involving waterfront businesses and the county's own zoning administrator. A rushed plan risks repeating that history.
The Casino Boat Is the Actual Obstacle
If you've wondered why nobody just draws a straight boardwalk from one end of the waterfront to the other, the answer is a specific piece of property: the Big "M" Casino boat operation. Walters has been explicit that the casino's business operations create a real routing problem for a continuous waterfront boardwalk. The workaround under discussion isn't glamorous. It may mean sending the boardwalk inland along the roadway in that stretch rather than hugging the water the whole way, which is exactly the kind of creative fix a master planner gets hired to solve.
Martin's own language about the eventual boardwalk describes it running from the casino to Little River Landing, which tells you the ambition hasn't shrunk. It just hasn't been engineered around the one property that won't move.
Here's where the two timelines actually stand, side by side:
| Already built or open | Still in planning |
|---|---|
| Makos On the Water tiki bar (completed May 2026) | County-funded boardwalk connecting the waterfront restaurants |
| 118 new parking spaces with food-voucher redemption | Master planner selection for the streetscape project |
| Pilot House repainted and under Martin's ownership | A routing solution around the casino boat property |
| Shark Bar at Makos (in progress) | Construction start date for any county-funded segment |
If you're planning your fall around "the new waterfront," the left column is what you can actually visit today.
The Rest of the Village Didn't Wait Either
The waterfront corridor gets the headlines, but Little River's small business turnover this year has been broader than one bar owner's expansion plan. The Gordon family bought Little River Marina and Lodge in June 2025 and held a ribbon cutting this past May after gutting and remodeling 22 of the marina's 29 motel rooms. They brought in Woody's Restaurant to run dining both inside and on a patio overlooking the water, open seven days a week for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. A 40-site campground is targeted for completion by summer 2026, which means the lodge's full footprint is still filling in even as it's already open for business.
Away from the water, three small businesses opened or announced openings within a single summer. Tiny Tigers Kids Co., a secondhand children's clothing and toy store run by Matt and Kayla Simmons, opened its doors in August after six months of build-out, aimed at giving families an affordable option for kids' clothes. Carolina Greek Delights held its ribbon cutting on August 28. Reel Blessed Outdoor Adventures is cutting its ribbon today, September 18, at its location off Highway 17.
None of these are waterfront businesses. All of them are evidence that Little River's growth isn't confined to the tourist-facing strip along Water Front Avenue. The village has grown by more than 11 percent over the past six years, and storefronts like these are where that growth shows up away from the restaurants everyone already knows.
Your Fall Weekend on the Water
The clearest reason to plan a Saturday down at the waterfront this fall is the Little River Shrimp Fest, returning October 10 and 11 at the Historic Little River Waterfront. It's a different event from the spring's Blue Crab Festival, smaller in scale but built around the same stretch of water and the same commercial fishing heritage that's kept Crab Catchers, Clark's Seafood and Chop House, and Seabrisa's in business here for decades. Crab Catchers alone has been under the Kettner family's ownership since 1996, in a building that predates that by another thirty years.
That's the context worth holding onto. Little River was a working port back in the 1850s, and the restaurants lining the water today grew out of the same commercial fishing fleet that still supplies them. The tiki bar, the new parking lot, and the eventual boardwalk are additions to that story, not replacements for it.
A Note From Me
I've watched enough small coastal communities go through this exact stretch, money restored but not yet spent, one business owner moving faster than the process around him, to know it's worth being patient about the boardwalk headlines and curious about what's already open. Little River's waterfront is worth a Saturday morning walk right now, tiki bar and all. Just don't expect to walk the whole thing yet.
If you're a homeowner here and you've been wondering what waterfront investment like this eventually does to property values along Water Front Avenue and the surrounding blocks, that's a longer conversation, and one I'm glad to have. You can find me at Trenette Tucker whenever you're ready to talk through what's actually happening on your street, not just what the headlines say.
