For almost two years, residents of Myrtle Beach were told that a $5 million pickleball complex was coming to Harrelson Boulevard. Renderings circulated. The city signed a letter of intent, then negotiated a 20-year lease. The tourism bureau put the venue on its list of 2026 attractions. Local television included it in a New Year’s roundup of things to look forward to.
It is not coming.
PicklePort Myrtle Beach has walked away from the project it had been developing on six city-owned acres beside Whispering Pines Golf Course, near Myrtle Beach International Airport. The company and city officials both confirmed the decision, which came down to arithmetic rather than permits or politics. Market conditions shifted after investors wrote their original business plan, and the returns no longer justified the front-end cost [Post and Courier, 2026].
That is a straightforward business story. But the timing makes it something more consequential for Horry County residents, because it lands in the same month that Myrtle Beach is losing one of its largest private racket facilities — and the same week City Council began asking whether taxpayers should build courts themselves.
The deal that almost happened
The terms are worth understanding, because they explain both why the city was enthusiastic and why its position now is weaker.
Myrtle Beach agreed to lease roughly six acres between the first and fourth tee boxes at Whispering Pines for 24 courts. The negotiated agreement ran 20 years, with rent starting at $17,500 and rising to $35,000 annually in years three through five, then adjusting with inflation [Post and Courier, 2026]. Council gave first reading to the concession agreement in September 2025, at which point the developer described a building of roughly 35,000 square feet housing 12 indoor courts alongside a reception area, snack bar, meeting room and pro shop [MyHorryNews, 2025].
For the city, this was close to a free amenity. Private capital would build the facility, private management would run it, and the general fund would collect rent on land that was producing nothing. The company’s own site stated that environmental approvals, construction permits and contractor selection were complete, with construction expected to start in late 2025 and a grand opening targeted for the third quarter of 2026 [The PicklePort, 2026].
The land itself carried complications that slowed everything down. The tract was part of Myrtle Beach Air Force Base and came to the city after the 1993 closure through the federal Land to Parks program, which transfers surplus federal property to communities for recreational use and retains oversight of how it is used. City officials spent part of the timeline waiting on National Park Service sign-off [Post and Courier, 2026]. That approval was eventually secured [MyHorryNews, 2025], which means the obstacle that killed this project was never regulatory.
Why the numbers stopped working
PicklePort Manager Dwight Hunsicker was direct about the reasoning. Building on the site would have required substantial up-front spending on land clearing, road work and infrastructure — costs borne entirely before a single paddle struck a ball. As the company prepared to sign the lease and break ground, it ran a fresh analysis of comparable pickleball venues and their returns, and consulted operators who had attempted similar public-private arrangements elsewhere. The conclusion was that the investment did not pencil out. Hunsicker described the company as being in <cite index=”26-1″>”a pause mode, an opportunistic mode”</cite> — still watching the market and open to other sites [Post and Courier, 2026].
There is an important distinction embedded in his explanation. Hunsicker drew a line between venues built as businesses and venues built as passion projects, and placed himself firmly in the first category [Post and Courier, 2026]. Nationally, pickleball’s growth is not in dispute: USA Pickleball membership crossed 53,000 by the end of 2021, a 43 percent jump in a single year, and the Association of Pickleball Players counted nearly 50 million American adults who had played at least once in 2022 [Post and Courier, 2026].
Popularity and profitability are different questions, however, and the gap between them is where this project died. A climate-controlled facility in a coastal tourism economy faces a seasonality problem that a suburban Midwest venue does not. Peak visitor season is also beach season, when demand for indoor recreation is lowest. The winter months that would fill indoor courts are the months when the resident population is at its thinnest, even accounting for snowbird traffic. Add construction costs that have climbed steadily since 2023, and a facility that penciled out on a 2024 spreadsheet may simply not pencil out on a 2026 one.
This is the second collapse, not the first
Horry County residents should recognize a pattern here rather than an isolated setback.
Tidal Creek Brewhouse spent months developing Tidal Creek Picklehouse, a 12-court complex planned for an abandoned Shine Avenue property in Market Common, paired with a small brewery, coffee roaster and kitchen. The company pursued city-approved abandoned building tax credits and ran a public crowdfunding campaign to help capitalize it. It, too, was called off. Co-founder Adrian Sawczuk cited a failure to secure the full capital needed to proceed responsibly, and pointed to rising construction and development costs as the factor that widened the funding gap [The Sun News, 2026].
Two significant private pickleball ventures in the same city, both announced with fanfare, both abandoned before groundbreaking, both for reasons of capital and cost. That is no longer a coincidence — it is a market signal. And it deserves more scrutiny than either project’s collapse received individually.
What survives is instructive. Dink District, a 40,000-square-foot indoor complex with 14 courts planned for Carolina Forest, remains in development [The Sun News, 2026]. Bistro B opened on North Kings Highway in April 2025 with courts attached to a restaurant [The Sun News, 2026]. The projects still standing are either smaller in scale or attached to an existing revenue stream. The stand-alone, ground-up, multimillion-dollar venue is the model that keeps failing.
The squeeze residents are actually feeling
While private courts fail to materialize, existing ones are disappearing.
The Grande Dunes Tennis Club, a 10-court clay facility, received planning commission approval to be demolished and replaced with a 31-home subdivision on eight acres. Residents packed a July council meeting to object, and city leaders told them the decision was outside municipal authority: the redevelopment required no rezoning, so council never had a vote. Community members estimated more than 500 club members would lose their nearby place to play [WMBF News, 2026].
Councilwoman Debbie Conner, who plays tennis regularly, has put the shortage in plain numbers. The city maintains fewer than 20 public courts, and she expects private facilities to keep converting to housing — naming the Prestwick Tennis Club south of the city as a likely candidate to follow Grande Dunes [Post and Courier, 2026].
So the loss of PicklePort is not simply a canceled amenity. It is a canceled amenity arriving in the middle of a net reduction in playable courts across the city.
What the city may build instead — and what it will cost
Council has begun discussing a municipal racket sports complex combining tennis and pickleball, possibly on land the city already owns, and staff have started developing cost estimates. City officials have noted that a tennis component would be strategically important because it opens access to United States Tennis Association grant funding; the USTA recently contributed roughly $300,000 toward clay courts at the Waccamaw Regional Tennis Center at Stables Park near Pawleys Island [Post and Courier, 2026].
This is where residents should pay close attention, because the fiscal posture has completely inverted. Under the PicklePort agreement, the city was to receive rent. Under a municipal build, the city pays. For scale, North Myrtle Beach’s Central Park Pickleball Complex — 15 courts, a small clubhouse, restrooms and spectator lawn — carries a $6.5 million price tag. A Myrtle Beach facility combining tennis and pickleball would plausibly exceed that, and hospitality tax revenue is the likeliest funding source, as it was for the $1.45 million Whispering Pines course renovation approved in 2024.
There is also an unresolved question about the six acres themselves. That parcel came to the city through a federal program restricting it to recreational use. It is now available again, already vetted, already approved by the National Park Service for a recreation facility. Whether it becomes the site of a public complex, sits idle, or is quietly redirected is a decision worth watching in real time rather than reading about after the fact.
The accountability question
One detail in the reporting deserves follow-up. City officials said they learned only recently that PicklePort would not be coming [Post and Courier, 2026] — yet the project had a first reading in September 2025, a construction start advertised for late 2025, and a place on the city’s and the tourism bureau’s 2026 attraction lists well into this year.
That gap is the story underneath the story. Residents were told for months that a facility was on the way while the deal was, at minimum, uncertain. Whatever the city builds next, the questions that ought to be asked before the first dollar is committed are the same ones PicklePort’s investors finally asked themselves: what does it cost, what does it return, and who absorbs the loss if the answer changes.
Further Reading
PicklePort Pulls Out – Post and Courier — “Pickleball company scraps plans for $5 million Myrtle Beach complex“ (Aug. 1, 2026): https://www.postandcourier.com/myrtle-beach/news/myrtle-beach-pickleball-airport-courts-sc/article_07ddfd84-16dc-4bad-a43f-211d2f2ad685.html
PicklePort Pulls Out – Post and Courier — “Myrtle Beach is losing tennis courts. The city may build a complex for racket sports.” (July 2026): https://www.postandcourier.com/myrtle-beach/news/myrtle-beach-tennis-complex-grande-dunes-sc/article_25074ec1-bfb6-4513-b8ae-61a71796313f.html
PicklePort Pulls Out – WMBF News — “Grande Dunes Tennis Club redevelopment draws pushback; city says it’s out of its hands” (July 15, 2026): https://www.wmbfnews.com/2026/07/15/grande-dunes-tennis-club-redevelopment-draws-pushback-city-says-its-out-its-hands/
PicklePort Pulls Out – MyHorryNews — “Myrtle Beach council enters agreement with PicklePort Myrtle Beach” (Sept. 2025): https://www.myhorrynews.com/news/myrtle-beach-council-enters-agreement-with-pickleport-myrtle-beach/article_e6febcf4-6177-41e9-86a2-1e5d391c5e06.html
PicklePort Pulls Out – The Sun News — “Pickleball courts planned for Myrtle Beach have been scrapped. Here’s why”: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/pickleball-courts-planned-myrtle-beach-100000250.html
PicklePort Pulls Out – WMBF News — “First render shared for proposed indoor pickleball facility in Myrtle Beach” (Jan. 21, 2025): https://www.wmbfnews.com/2025/01/21/first-render-shared-proposed-indoor-pickleball-facility-myrtle-beach/
PicklePort Pulls Out – The PicklePort — project site: https://www.thepickleport.com/
PicklePort Pulls Out – National Park Service — Federal Lands to Parks Program: https://www.nps.gov/orgs/1508/index.htm
