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The issue is money, and one of the largest government agencies in South Carolina will soon be in a Horry County court to determine the value of land it claims is important to road infrastructure work in Myrtle Beach.

The South Carolina Department of Transportation seeks eminent domain for a small tract of land near the Myrtle Beach oceanfront, with a jury trial beginning Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2025.

The department wants a 0.12-acre plot of land at the intersection of Maple Street and North Oak Street, near Mt. Atlanticus Minotaur Golf at 707 North Kings Highway.

The agency filed the condemnation notice with Horry County Court records in March 2023. The trial will determine how much to pay the property owner for the tract.

One Heart LLC owns the 0.12-acre plot, which SCDOT values the land at $117,230. Meanwhile, One Heart LLC’s appraisal reports the land is worth $450,000.

One Heart LLC bought the land from Wells Fargo Bank in 2015 for $100,000. Horry County Land Records shows that the bank previously purchased the property for more than $2.4 million in 2011.

Lawyers for both parties either did not return a request for comment before publication or declined to provide one to The Sun News. A spokesperson for SCDOT also declined to comment and wrote in an email that the agency “does not offer commentary on matters related to pending litigation.”

The South Carolina Secretary of State’s website lists Timothy Wilkes as One Heart LLC’s registered agent, but he did not return a request for comment before publication.

The department wants the small property as part of Horry County’s efforts to improve its road infrastructure.

SCDOT stated in a pre-trial filing that it needed the land for the Ride III project, which involves realigning parts of U.S. 501 and adding sidewalks while improving the 7th Avenue intersection between Oak Street and North Kings Highway.

Horry County’s Ride III dashboard shows the plan to realign U.S. 501 from Broadway Street to 7th Avenue. The project could cost $13.9 million and conclude in the fall of 2026.

With Myrtle Beach’s second-ever PGA Tour tournament less than three months away, many want to know who will tee off when it starts at the Dunes Golf and Beach Club.

A ‘duel-field’ PGA Tour event featuring 132 players, the Myrtle Beach Classic will start May 8, 2025, and run through May 11.

Myrtle Beach Classic Tournament Director Darren Nelson did not return a request for comment before publication.

In 2024, the Myrtle Beach Classic announced its lineup less than a week before the tournament began. In a previous 2024 interview, Nelson said pros who finished within the Top 50 of the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup ranking of the prior year would not play in the Myrtle Beach Classic.

Therefore, PGA Tour standouts like Scottie Scheffler, Collin Morikawa and Xander Schauffele wouldn’t compete in the Myrtle Beach Classic.

The PGA Tour’s top pros will golf that weekend, though. The Myrtle Beach Classic occurs at the same time as the Truist Championship PGA Tour Signature Event tees off from The Philadelphia Cricket Club May 7 and concludes May 11.

The Truist Championship was formerly called The Wells Fargo Championship. While the Myrtle Beach Classic has a $4 million purse, the Truist Championship has a $20 million purse.

“The title sponsor looked at several options. They looked at a PGA Tour event. They looked at PGA Tour Champions. They looked at LPGA options,” Nelson said in March 2024. “They felt like this type of event was the best fit this time for Myrtle Beach on the investment level.”

The Sun News

Ben Morse is the Retail and Leisure Reporter for The Sun News. Morse covers local business and Coastal Carolina University football and was awarded third place in the 2023 South Carolina Press Association News Contest for sports beat reporting and second place for sports video in the all-daily division. Morse previously worked for The Island Packet, covering local government. Morse graduated from American University in 2023 with a Bachelor’s Degree in journalism and economics and is originally from Prospect, Kentucky.

As egg prices surge and supply shortages continue due to the ongoing bird flu outbreak, some South Carolina stores are restricting how many eggs customers can buy.

Egg prices reached an average of nearly $5 per dozen in the United States last month, an all-time high according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But despite bigger price tags, eggs remain scarce on some grocery shelves. In response, popular chains like Costco and Trader Joe’s have placed caps on egg purchases.

“We hope these limits will help to ensure that as many of our customers who need eggs are able to purchase them when they visit Trader Joe’s,” a company representative said of the restrictions in an email.

Here’s what South Carolina shoppers should know about which stores are limiting eggs and how many customers can buy.

Representatives for Food Lion, Harris Teeter, Kroger, Lowes Foods and Publix all said the stores haven’t implemented policies to cap customers’ egg purchases.

“It’s such an evolving market right now,” a spokesperson for Lowes Foods said. “It could change tomorrow; We just don’t know, but we currently don’t have any limits.”

Some grocery chain locations could also implement limits locally, even if no such company-wide policy is in place.

At least one South Carolina Publix store placed a two-unit limit on eggs and a Kroger representative said that, while the company has no plans to place restrictions in its Georgia, eastern Alabama or South Carolina stores, “certain stores may set limits as they work to re-stock.”

Even at groceries with policies limiting egg purchases, customers at popular South Carolina stores can purchase at least a dozen eggs, unless they’re out of stock.

Here are the egg-buying restrictions currently in place, by store

Costco did not respond to a request for comment, but staff at several locations said purchases are limited to three cartons per customer, per day. According to one employee, the three-carton policy applies to all U.S. stores.

Lidl is limiting the purchase of certain products.

“The following egg brands sold at Lidl US stores are currently limited to two per customer to ensure fair distribution: Green Valley, Simpson’s Eggs, and Puglisi’s Farm,” a LIDL US spokesperson said in an email. “Specialty egg brands, including cage free, free range and organic, do not have limitations at this time at Lidl US.”

Sam’s Club stores are also restricting egg purchases.

“We continue to limit the number of egg purchases to two per item,” a company spokesperson confirmed.

Trader Joe’s locations across the country are capping egg purchases at a dozen per customer, per day, according to a public relations manager.

Walmart has technically imposed an egg purchase limit in its U.S. stores, but only on 60-count cartons. The chain is restricting customers to the purchase of two cartons, or 120 eggs in total.

However, a Walmart spokesperson said local stores can impose purchase limits if necessary.

When people emerge from the cold dark of winter with an unnatural orange color, a bad spray tan is usually to blame. But in the case of orange alligators, the reason’s a little different.

Photographer Dan Krieger is no stranger to gators. With a host of ponds and small lakes connected by culverts that serve as storm drain reservoirs, his Little River neighborhood is a welcoming habitat for the large reptiles.

But when he spotted a 9-foot alligator the color of a pumpkin from his back porch, Krieger knew he had to grab his camera.

“Sure enough, it was one of these orange gators, and it was a very sunny day, so he’s just lying out there sunning himself,” Krieger said. “I grabbed my camera and, fortunately, I didn’t have to get that close. I have a telephoto lens, and took a picture of Gary the gator.”

The Little River alligator Krieger affectionately dubbed “Gary” isn’t the only South Carolina animal seen donning an unusually bright coat this time of year. The strange coloring is a result of environmental factors, and can be completely natural.

During the winter, alligators hunker down in a period of relative inactivity called brumation. Their metabolic rates slow and, while they continue drinking to stay hydrated the reptiles cut out meals, according to the South Carolina Aquarium.

Brumating alligators settle into mud holes to stay warm on cold days, which can give them a distinctive orange color.

“Usually, an orange alligator is due to a mud that has clay in it, or sometimes it could be rust,” South Carolina Department of Natural Resources Alligator project leader Morgan Hart said. “But we’ve even seen them in pretty pristine wilderness where there wouldn’t necessarily be rust in the mud, so it can just be oxidized natural metals in the mud.”

According to Hart, orange gator sightings are common in cooler months not because the mud dyes or stains the reptiles during brumation, but because the reptiles emerge from the mud to sun themselves on warmer days.

As the sun dries the mud it brings out the vibrant orange, so folks are more likely to spot the gators. When February rolls around, South Carolina weather favors sightings. Krieger spotted an orange gator around this time last year and other sightings made February headlines in years past.

“They’ve been on the bottom, they’re covered in mud, they come up and they sit in the sun and it just dries on them like a thin coat,” she said. “And then it looks like their natural color is almost like a dark orange.”

Because the orange coloring is essentially nature’s body paint, Hart says it washes off like any other mud. In some cases, the mud will stick around longer in the alligator’s scutes or back scales, creating a grid-like pattern until the animal gets in the water for a prolonged period.

But why don’t other animals in the same ponds take on the same rust-colored crust as alligators? Well, some do.

Turtles have occasionally been spotted with similar coloring. With tough skin and shells, turtles sometimes dry with an orangey coating, just like gators.

“A beaver might be in the same water, or an otter, but they’re going to shake it off, and it’s not going to dry in that hard crust that you would get on the back of a turtle or an alligator,” Hart said.

Orange or otherwise, alligators are an important part of South Carolina’s ecosystem. But that doesn’t mean they’re friendly.

For those who spy one of the oddly-colored gators, it’s best to enjoy the sight from afar. Don’t try to feed alligators and remember to maintain a safe distance for humans and pets.

“Watch them and appreciate them,” she said. “It’s kind of a unique thing to see, and [people] get a little bit lucky if they get to see them.”

This story was originally published February 13, 2025 at 6:00 AM.

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Maria Elena Scott writes about trending topics and what you need to know in the Grand Strand. She studied journalism at the University of Houston and covered Cleveland news before coming to the Palmetto State.

MYRTLE BEACH — Myrtle Beach leaders want to keep minor league baseball in the city.

The question is whether Horry County — which owns 30 percent of Pelicans Stadium — will go along with their plan to upgrade the 26-year-old ballpark.

City Council on Feb. 11 unanimously supported a resolution that outlines some key elements of a potential stadium deal, including increasing the Myrtle Beach Pelicans' annual rent from $150,000 per year to $750,000 and extending the team's lease for 20 years.

"We love the Pelicans. We believe that it's a great organization for our community," Mayor Brenda Bethune said. "But we also have to protect our taxpayers. And any agreement that we enter into, once we come to terms with a proposed lease agreement, it has to protect our taxpayers."

A key question is who will pay for $20 million in stadium improvements. The city, which owns 70 percent of the stadium, has offered to pay for $14 million of that total. They are asking the county to cover the rest.

But county leaders have not decided whether they will support the deal. Some county officials have balked at putting any additional money into the stadium, and County Council Chairman Johnny Gardner said this week that the county is looking for a path to get out of stadium ownership entirely.

"If we could fashion some way where Myrtle Beach could keep the baseball and get the county out of it, that would be a win-win for everybody," said Gardner, who could not be reached for comment after the City Council's vote.

County Councilman Dennis DiSabato, who represents the Carolina Forest area, said county leaders haven't formally discussed the city's proposal and he's not sure how he'll vote. However, he sees value in the ballpark.

"I do believe the stadium is a useful amenity to both the city and the county," he said.

While there's a framework for a new lease, there isn't a binding agreement. Essentially, city officials have outlined the major deal points and said they will work to reach a new lease with those conditions.

But even some city leaders aren't completely comfortable with the resolution they just approved. Although the vote was unanimous, City Councilwoman Jackie Hatley said she was "reluctantly" voting yes to keep the discussion going.

"I'm really expecting the lease that comes through to be a good one," Hatley said. "We've worked on this long enough, and we need to have it where it makes everybody happy."

City Councilman Mike Lowder agreed.

"We've been plowing this field for a long time, and we've come all this way," Lowder said. "Even though it's not binding, I'm going to support it, but we'll see where it goes. I think it's a better deal than what we've had before."

In recent years, the city, county and Pelicans have debated ways to satisfy a mandate from Major League Baseball to make stadium improvements. In 2020, MLB cited 210 deficiencies at Pelicans Ballpark, including in the visitors and home clubhouse, locker rooms for female officials, on-site weight and training rooms, expanding the hitting and pitching tunnels, improved lighting and higher walls around the field. If upgrades aren’t made, local officials have said the team may not play here.

The team's original 20-year lease expired after the 2018 season. The Pelicans and local leaders then approved a series of extensions, leading to a 2024 agreement that was framed as a final one-year deal so a long-term plan could be developed.

At one time, city officials and Pelicans representatives had discussed building a new downtown stadium that could serve as a multipurpose venue costing more than $100 million. But city officials said all the parties agreed it was not possible.

Under the proposed deal, the county would pay for $6 million of the $20 million needed for stadium improvements. Considering that at one point the total price tag for upgrades was estimated at nearly $60 million, both city and county officials said the latest proposal is more feasible.

So far, city and county officials said the team has been amenable to the proposed lease terms, and on Feb. 7 the team offered a public statement of support for the City Council resolution.

"We appreciate our partnership with the City and Horry County as we take this important step toward securing a long-term commitment to ensure the Pelicans remain a beloved part of the community for generations to come," said Ryan Moore, the team's president.

The Pelicans got their start in Myrtle Beach when the Atlanta Braves brought in a Class A-Advanced club from Durham, N.C., the Durham Bulls made famous by the 1988 movie "Bull Durham."

The team was affiliated with the Texas Rangers from 2011-2014. They have been with the Chicago Cubs since the 2015 season.