The producer behind the Carolina Country Music Festival wants to bring a three-day rock festival to the long-vacant former Myrtle Square Mall site in May 2027. The proposal — branded *Myrtle Beach Rock Fest* — was presented to the Myrtle Beach Special Events Committee on Wednesday, June 10, and the committee deferred a decision to City Manager Jonathan “Fox” Simons Jr. for further review. This Myrtle Beach Rock Fest proposal aims to revitalize the area and attract music lovers from across the nation.
The pitch comes from Southern Entertainment, the Nashville-based promoter that produces CCMF, working with Palmetto Productions as its local coordinating partner. Amie Lee, president of Palmetto Productions, presented the application. According to public reporting from WPDE and the Post and Courier, the festival would run May 7-9, 2027 on the 35-acre Burroughs & Chapin Co. Inc. parcel that sits between Kings Highway and Oak Street, from 27th Avenue North to Myrtle Place, adjacent to the Myrtle Beach Convention Center.
The application is a proposal, not an approval. Committee members raised three concerns before pushing the matter to the city manager: the city resources a festival of that scale would consume, the site’s proximity to schools, homes, businesses and churches, and a date collision with the Myrtle Beach Harley-Davidson Spring Rally — the spring Bike Week that draws more than 300,000 visitors to the Grand Strand each May.
Myrtle Beach Rock Fest Proposal: A New Era for Live Music
What was proposed
The Myrtle Beach Rock Fest proposal is expected to bring significant economic benefits to the region, boosting tourism and local businesses during the event.
Lee told the committee the festival is “still very much in the conceptual phase,” according to public reporting. No artists, sponsors or specific genre subtype have been disclosed. The application sets the format — three days of rock at the former mall parcel — and leaves the lineup for later.
The format is modeled on CCMF, the country festival Southern Entertainment has produced in Myrtle Beach since 2015. The 11th edition wrapped June 4-7 at the Burroughs & Chapin Pavilion Place downtown. The rock proposal would put the same producer on a different B&C parcel three times the size of the country festival’s current home.
Southern Entertainment’s portfolio includes the Barefoot Country Music Fest in Wildwood, New Jersey — a four-day event drawing 100,000-plus attendees and contracted through 2030 — along with festivals in Charlotte, Greenville and Buffalo. The application states the company has produced more than 500 events nationally. Bob Durkin, Southern Entertainment co-founder and president, has not been quoted publicly on the Rock Fest proposal.
The Myrtle Square Mall site
The Myrtle Square Mall opened in 1965 and operated for four decades before Burroughs & Chapin shifted its retail footprint inland to the new Coastal Grand Mall, which opened in March 2004. Vereen Construction Company finished demolishing the old mall in mid-2006. Charleston-based architecture firm LS3P was hired to draft a redevelopment plan. In the 20 years since the wrecking equipment left, no permanent development has been built.
The parcel as originally platted ran 48 acres. The application references 35 acres of available footprint, a figure that likely reflects the developable portion presented to the committee. The land sits in the heart of central Myrtle Beach, adjacent to the Convention Center and within walking distance of Kings Highway tourist corridors. It currently hosts one recurring event — the annual Run to the Sun Car and Truck Show every March, which drew roughly 10,000 spectators and 3,500 vehicles to its 37th edition this year.
Burroughs & Chapin is the owner of record. The same company built the original mall, oversaw its demolition, developed Coastal Grand and owns the Pavilion Place where CCMF is staged. Separately, B&C is shopping a redevelopment plan for the former Myrtle Beach Pavilion site on Eighth and Ninth Avenues North — a roughly 12-acre parcel where a permanent live-music venue is under consideration. Mayor Mark Kruea has spoken publicly about that Pavilion project. The Pavilion redevelopment and the Rock Fest proposal are two different parcels and two different projects, and neither set of public comments applies to the other.
Three concerns at the committee meeting
The first concern was the city resource burden. A festival modeled on CCMF would draw on police, fire, EMS, public works and sanitation staffing for a full three-day stretch. One committee member, according to public reporting, said the committee did not have the authority to commit the level of city services the application would require — which is the procedural reason the matter was deferred to the city manager.
The second concern was proximity. The site is bordered by residential neighborhoods, downtown businesses, schools and churches. The application implicates traffic, noise, parking and alcohol-sales questions that any festival in central Myrtle Beach would have to answer, and that an outdoor rock festival amplifies.
The third concern is the date. The 2027 Myrtle Beach Harley-Davidson Spring Rally runs May 7-16, 2027, according to the rally’s official schedule. The Rock Fest’s proposed May 7-9, 2027 dates fall inside the first three days of that window — a direct calendar overlap, not a near-miss. The rally has been a 10-day fixture in early-to-mid May for decades and draws an estimated 300,000-plus visitors to the Grand Strand annually.
Stacking a three-day rock festival on top of Bike Week would compound demand on every city service the committee flagged in concern one. Of the three issues raised, the date conflict is the one with the clearest near-term path to a fix — a shifted weekend — and the one with no obvious path through if the dates hold.
The CCMF precedent
The Carolina Country Music Festival is the model the application points to. The 11th annual edition wrapped at Pavilion Place on June 4-7, with Riley Green, Luke Bryan, Blake Shelton and Post Malone headlining four nights and more than 40 artists across multiple stages. CCMF 2027 dates, announced via drone show June 8, will run June 10-13.
The economic numbers are the part of the CCMF story the Rock Fest application is built around. Visit Myrtle Beach projects CCMF 2026 attendance “well over 100,000” total, with roughly 38,000 fans per day. Visit Myrtle Beach EVP Diane Charno has put the economic impact at more than $50 million and tax revenue at more than $5 million for the festival weekend. Visit Myrtle Beach uses Zartico cell-phone geotracking to measure attendee off-site spending — the data that supports the impact figures and the data Southern Entertainment would lean on for a rock-festival pitch.
A rock audience is not a country audience. Welcome to Rockville at Daytona International Speedway is a four-day rock, metal and punk festival that drew 230,000 attendees over its 2025 run and is back May 7-10, 2026. Sonic Temple at Historic Crew Stadium in Columbus, Ohio is a four-day festival drawing roughly 175,000. Both run in May. Both share the May 2027 window the Myrtle Beach application is asking for.
Tourism economics and the May question
A rock festival demographic typically skews older than country festival demographics, with different lodging, food and beverage patterns. Both audiences travel. CCMF data shows roughly 70 percent of attendees travel more than 50 miles to attend and visit other local attractions while in town. A rock festival at the Myrtle Square Mall parcel would be competing for those same hotel rooms, restaurants and roads — except in May, when the Bike Week visitor population is already in place.
The May 7-9, 2027 weekend, as the application now reads, asks the city to absorb two destination events simultaneously. The cleanest negotiation lane is a date shift. Late April or early June — outside the rally window and before the peak summer season — would isolate the festival’s resource demand and let the city evaluate it on its own footprint. Whether Southern Entertainment can move the dates without disrupting an artist routing window is a separate question the application does not address.
What’s next
City Manager Simons now holds the file. A future Special Events Committee meeting is likely once the manager’s review is complete. If the committee then recommends approval, the application would move to City Council. Any final approval would touch a series of permits — noise variance, road closure and traffic plan, public safety detail, fire marshal occupancy, alcohol license and a special-event permit.
Site preparation is the other timeline question. The parcel is largely vacant and would need temporary infrastructure — stages, power, water, fencing, fan ingress and egress — built on ground that has not hosted a festival of this size. With a May 2027 target, the planning window from this week’s deferral is roughly 11 months.
Conclusion
Two facts sit side by side. The proposal exists and is being taken seriously enough by city staff that it has moved to the city manager rather than being voted down at committee. And the Harley date collision is the dominant near-term hurdle on a list that also includes resource burden and neighborhood proximity. The former Myrtle Square Mall site has been on the city’s open-question list since the wrecking equipment left in 2006. A multi-day rock festival is one of many possible uses for the 35 acres. The next move belongs to the city manager.
## Further Reading
Myrtle Beach Rock Fest proposal – WPDE — [Rock Fest proposal sent to Myrtle Beach leaders](https://wpde.com/news/local/rock-fest-proposal-sent-to-myrtle-beach-leaders-carolina-country-music-fest-old-myrtle-square-mall-may-harley-davison-06102026)
Myrtle Beach Rock Fest proposal – Post and Courier — [CCMF organizers seek to bring rock concert to Myrtle Beach](https://www.postandcourier.com/myrtle-beach/news/ccmf-myrtle-beach-rock-festival-mall-site/article_5d840e34-da6f-4e0f-a202-32167ce32cc9.html)
Myrtle Beach Rock Fest proposal – Post and Courier — [Music venue considered for former Myrtle Beach Pavilion site](https://www.postandcourier.com/myrtle-beach/business/music-venue-myrtle-beach-pavilion-site/article_cc9fa984-c0be-46ed-8eee-b0761ec3cdc4.html)
Myrtle Beach Rock Fest proposal – Post and Courier — [CCMF kickstarts Myrtle Beach summer economy](https://www.postandcourier.com/myrtle-beach/business/carolina-country-music-fest-myrtle-beach-economy-summer/article_463c5601-0f35-44be-a02e-0aabdbe0f000.html)
Myrtle Beach Rock Fest proposal – WPDE — [CCMF 2027 dates announced during drone show](https://wpde.com/news/local/ccmf-2027-dates-announced-during-drone-show-carolina-country-music-fest-june-06082026-myrtle-beach-luke-bryan-randy-post-malone)
Myrtle Beach Rock Fest proposal – Carolina Country Music Fest — [official site](https://carolinacountrymusicfest.com/)
Myrtle Beach Rock Fest proposal – Southern Entertainment — [CCMF client page](https://southernentertainment.com/clients/carolina-country-music-fest/)
Myrtle Beach Rock Fest proposal – Myrtle Beach Bike Week — [Spring Rally](https://springbeachrally.com/)
Myrtle Beach Rock Fest proposal – Welcome to Rockville — [festival info](https://welcometorockville.com/festival-info/)
Myrtle Beach Rock Fest proposal – Wikipedia — [Myrtle Square Mall](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myrtle_Square_Mall)
Myrtle Beach Rock Fest proposal – City of Myrtle Beach — [City Manager’s Office](https://www.cityofmyrtlebeach.com/departments/city_managers_office.php)
