Best Things to Do Near Tidewater Plantation This Year
July 23, 2026
July 23, 2026
The stretch of Highway 17 between the Tidewater Plantation gate and the state line used to be a pass-through. You drove it to get somewhere else, usually south toward Barefoot Landing or the Myrtle Beach mall corridor. In 2026, that math has quietly changed.
The short answer for residents who have been on autopilot: the closer side of the drive is doing more interesting work this year than the far side. The evidence sits in three specific places, all inside a ten-minute radius of the front gate.
The single opening most worth tracking is on the property you have driven past a thousand times without registering. The old Sea Merchants building on Highway 17 has been a landmark locals used as a reference point for years, the "turn left past Sea Merchants" kind of address. That building is coming back as something entirely different.
It is being gutted and reimagined as White Heron, an upscale coastal seafood restaurant, expected to open in May 2026 at 1104 Highway 17 S in North Myrtle Beach. For a Tidewater household, that address matters more than the concept. It is closer to your kitchen than most of the restaurants you already default to on a Friday night, and it fills a category, sit-down coastal seafood with a real bar program, that the immediate neighborhood has been thin on.
Up at the north end of North Myrtle Beach, another gap has already been filled. The Grove House has opened in the Cherry Grove area, joining long-standing local favorites like The Shack, Snooky's Oceanfront Restaurant, and Duffy Street Seafood Shack. If your weekend routine has been rotating the same three of those, there is now a fourth chair at the table.
The Ocean Drive stretch of Main Street has been in a slow shuffle for a couple of years, and 2026 is when the plan behind the shuffle finally shows itself.
OD Taco Co. is taking over the space that formerly housed the Fenway Grill on Main Street in North Myrtle Beach, with plans to move to a new location once redevelopment in the area is completed. The target opening date is May 15, 2026. Tacos in a former grill space is not the story. The story is who is behind it and what it signals.
Harold Worley, a former Horry County councilman, owns several properties in the North Myrtle Beach area, and his son H.G. Worley Jr. says the family wants to take a more active role in operating their own businesses on their prime properties. H.G. Worley Jr. is heading up the redevelopment of the northeast side of Main Street. Listed in development plans as "Shag City USA," phase one of the new project will replace the space that was formerly the Duffy Street Seafood Shack with a two-story restaurant, relocation of the Melt ice cream shop, and a host of other pieces.
Two takeaways for anyone living inside Tidewater. First, the OD Taco Co. building itself is a placeholder. The permanent shape of Main Street a couple of years from now will look meaningfully different. Second, this is owner-operator redevelopment, not a national chain rollout, which usually produces a slower and more idiosyncratic streetscape than the alternative.
That is a useful thing to know before you form an opinion about a taco shop in a former grill.
If you have lived at Tidewater for more than a season, you already know about the Blue Crab Festival. What is worth updating is the dating and the second festival most people still miss.
| Event | Dates in 2026 | Where | Admission |
|---|---|---|---|
| World Famous Blue Crab Festival, 44th annual | May 16–17 | Historic Little River Waterfront | $10 advance or day-of, kids 12 and under free |
| Little River Shrimp Fest | October 10–11 | 4468 Mineola Avenue, Little River Waterfront | $10 advance or day-of, kids 12 and under free |
The Blue Crab Festival is not a niche event. It has been recognized by The Sun News as one of the best annual events in the Grand Strand for the past eight-plus consecutive years. Food and entertainment run from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. along the Historic Waterfront each day, and advance or day-of tickets run $10. VIP Access is available for $100 per day and includes festival entry, a t-shirt voucher, exclusive access to a VIP area near the stage with seating and food, and two drink tickets.
The Shrimp Fest is the sleeper. Same waterfront, same $10 gate, same 9 to 5 hours, half the recognition, and it lands on a shoulder-season weekend when the weather is often better than it was in May. If you have out-of-town guests you have been trying to time a visit for, October in Little River is the answer more often than July.
The Sounds of Summer free concert series at North Myrtle Beach Park and Sports Complex is the most underused amenity in the neighborhood, mostly because it is not marketed toward people who already live here. A representative Friday: MAMMA MANIA! ABBA Tribute Concert on June 19, 2026 from 7 p.m. onwards.
If you want something a little quieter, La Belle Amie Vineyard runs Saturday afternoon live music, for example Chasing Rachel on June 20, 2026 from 12 p.m. onwards. The vineyard sits a few minutes north of the gate and functions the way a lot of Tidewater residents wish the immediate area had more of, an outdoor bench-and-glass afternoon that does not require reservations or a bridge crossing.
None of this is an argument that the Broadway at the Beach corridor has gone quiet. It has not. But the case for making that drive has become more selective, which is useful information in itself.
The three openings that justify the extra thirty minutes:
The pattern to notice is the direction. Two of the three sit on the water, and neither is closer to Tidewater than what is opening on Highway 17. The third is an indoor entertainment complex that will suit a rainy Saturday with grandkids and not much else. If your default has been to point the car south by reflex, this is the year to check that reflex.
Set two calendar reminders and change one habit. Reminders: the weekend of May 16 for Blue Crab and October 10 for Shrimp Fest, both walkable from a single parking spot on the Little River waterfront. The habit: when someone asks where to eat, run the Highway 17 north list before the Barefoot Landing list. The first has more new answers this year than the second.
Tidewater's location has always been the quiet argument for the community. What has changed in 2026 is that the ten minutes outside the gate finally have a story of their own worth paying attention to, not just a route through to somewhere else.
If you are thinking beyond weekends and starting to weigh a move within the community, a right-sizing, or listing a home you have owned here for years, Karen Sells the Coastal Carolinas knows the Tidewater market and the Little River corridor around it. Start Your Coastal Home Search when the timing is yours.
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