Burroughs & Chapin Company, Inc.

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Burroughs & Chapin Company, Inc.

2411 North Oak Street
Myrtle Beach, South Carolina 29577
U.S.A.
Telephone: (843) 448-5123
Fax: (843) 448-9838
Web site: http://www.burroughschapin.com

Private Company
Incorporated: 1895 as Burroughs & Collins Company
Employees: 1,500
Sales: $600 million (2003 est.)
NAIC: 237210 Land Subdivision; 713110 Amusement and Theme Parks; 713910 Golf Courses and Country Clubs

Burroughs & Chapin Company, Inc., is a leading South Carolina developer. The company and its predecessors defined the development of Myrtle Beach throughout the 20th century, building the landmark Pavilion, hotels, malls, and golf courses while donating land for many community projects. Burroughs & Chapin has expanded beyond those shores, building timeshares and NASCAR theme parks in family-oriented vacation spots such as Sevierville, Tennessee.

19TH-CENTURY ORIGINS

Company founder Franklin Gorham Burroughs was born in 1834 in Williamston, North Carolina. Instead of becoming a farmer like his father, he set out to make his fortune. He moved to Horry (pronounced “o-ree”) County, in the northeastern corner of South Carolina, to work at a relative’s store, and before long he had started his own construction business building public works projects.

A promising venture distilling turpentine was interrupted by the Civil War, during which Burroughs became a prisoner of war. In 1866, following the war, Burroughs joined another relative as business partners in Burroughs & Gurganus, which dealt in naval stores— the tar used to waterproof the hulls of ships—and other products derived from the region’s pine trees.

This firm was renamed Burroughs & Collins after employee Benjamin Grier Collins acquired the shares of the original partner, William Gurganus, some time after he died in 1870. The business was incorporated in 1895 as Burroughs & Collins Company. The sons of F. G. Burroughs bought out Collins in 1906.

In addition to naval stores, the business dealt in a wide range of other enterprises, including real estate. Land acquired for turpentine production was retained for other uses after the pine sap was used up.

BUILDING A NEW TOWN

The Burroughs & Collins partnership had also started a steamboat line in 1882, an important step toward building the transportation infrastructure in a region crossed by rivers and swamps. The business partners were soon building their own vessels, culminating in a few state-of the-art in operation by the end of the 19th century.

Another major pathway toward growth in the region was the railroad. As with many other rural communities, Horry County’s commercial life took off with the coming of the railroad. The first railroad to connect the county with the outside world, via Wilmington, North Carolina, arrived in December 1887. A dozen years later the sons of company founder F. G. Burroughs, who had passed away in 1897, were the first to lay tracks over the 14-mile stretch from the shore of the Waccamaw River to Myrtle Beach—originally known as “New Town.” Their purpose was to both carry pine logs inland and to carry passengers to the sea. Originally called the Conway and Seashore Railroad, Burroughs & Collins sold it in 1905.

Commercial development was quick to follow the influx of tourists. Burroughs & Collins erected a general store and the descriptively named Seaside Inn, a three-story structure, in 1901. Along with the coming of the railroad, another development helped define nearby Myrtle Beach’s character as a burgeoning tourist destination. The landmark Myrtle Beach Pavilion and Boardwalk was built in 1908 by Burroughs & Collins. Electricity had come to the site only the previous year.

A NEW PARTNER

In 1912, Simeon B. Chapin, scion of a Chicago merchant family, joined the Burroughs family in a venture called the Myrtle Beach Farms Company. Its mission was to develop 53 tracts of Burroughs & Collins land through farming (principally potatoes), forestry, and real estate development. The hotel and the Pavilion were included.

Burroughs & Collins had moved to a new address on Conway’s Main Street after its original “Gully Store” became a hospital in 1910. After World War I, the mercantile business was acquired by new owners and became known as the Cox-Lundy Company and later the Jerry Cox Company. (It ultimately closed in 1992.) The firm also sold its grocery and steamship businesses.

Most of the Myrtle Beach Farms property, or 64,488 acres, was sold to textile baron John T. Woodside in 1926. The nearly $1 million transaction was considered the largest property deal in state history. Approximately 1,300 acres around the Pavilion and beach-front were not included.

Woodside had ambitious plans and soon built a luxury hotel. However, the stock market crash of 1929 intervened and he defaulted on the massive mortgage, sending the property back to Myrtle Beach Farms via foreclosure.

This million-dollar gamble indicates the potential investors saw for Myrtle Beach—located midway between Atlantic City and Florida—to become the next big tourist center on the Eastern Seaboard.

POSTWAR DEVELOPMENTS

Scarcity of supplies slowed development at Myrtle Beach during World War II. The town’s airfield was used to train Army Air Corps pilots; it was used as an Air Force base for 40 years beginning in 1953. The Pavilion burned down in 1944; materials rationing delayed its rebuilding as a virtually hurricane-proof, reinforced concrete structure.

A powerful setback for the community came in 1954, when Hurricane Hazel destroyed most of the houses along the beach. Another important milestone was the end of passenger rail service to Myrtle Beach in 1955, though freight trains kept rolling for another 33 years.

In 1948 Burroughs & Collins was restructured into three units: the Burroughs & Collins Company, the Burroughs Company, and the Burroughs Timber Company. The Burroughs Company unit handled fertilizer production and farm credit until 1968, when these operations were divested, leaving it to concentrate on rental property. The timber holdings were sold to Boise Cascade Corporation in 1977.

Myrtle Beach Farms began to develop golf courses in the 1960s. The area’s oldest course, Pine Lakes, would be acquired by Burroughs & Chapin in 2001. Nicknamed “Granddaddy,” Pine Lakes dated back to 1927.

COMPANY PERSPECTIVES

The mission of Burroughs & Chapin Company, Inc., a family owned, values based developer and operator of lifestyle residential and resort communities, sports-entertainment-recreation, and commercial enterprises since 1895, is to create extraordinary value for shareholders, team members, customers and communities through the synergy of: optimal use of resources, development and operation of products and services, the cultivation of strategic alliances and uncompromising commitment to integrity and excellence.

The company’s philanthropy bent was established early. In 1966 Myrtle Beach Farms donated half the land for the Myrtle Beach Convention Center. By this time, it had granted land for a library and a hospital, as well as 320 seafront acres for the Myrtle Beach State Park, which opened in 1935. The firm also provided for public beach access at the ends of Myrtle Beach’s streets.

The Pavilion added a roller coaster in 1970 to become a full-fledged amusement park. In 1975 Myrtle Beach Farms built the Myrtle Square Mall, the area’s first enclosed shopping center. It was renovated in 1989, but after another 15 years would be ultimately supplanted by the Coastal Grand-Myrtle Beach mall.

MERGER AND NEW MANAGEMENT

Myrtle Beach Farms’ headquarters was destroyed by arson in the midst of a 1987 renovation. J. Egerton Burroughs became chairman of the board that year; it was a position he would hold for at least 20 years. While there was continuity at the top, the family was looking for fresh blood to lead the management.

William J. Sigmon, Sr., was named CEO of Myrtle Beach Farms in 1989 after nine years as company president. The first person outside the founding families to hold the position, he had originally joined the company in 1967.

In September 1990 Burroughs & Collins merged with Myrtle Beach Farms to form Burroughs & Chapin Company, Inc.; the new name hearkened back to the Burroughs family’s original investor in the venture, Simeon Chapin. The original entities continued as subsidiaries of the newly formed holding company. During the year, Burroughs & Chapin moved its headquarters from Conway into a new four-story office building in Myrtle Beach.

After the merger Sigmon led the combined company until his retirement in 1993. He was succeeded by Doug Wendel as Burroughs & Chapin’s CEO. Wendel, formerly a manager in the public sector, was known as aggressive and well-connected, and sometimes controversial. A number of major projects were soon in the works.

At the time, Burroughs & Chapin employed 400 people full time and another 400 on a seasonal basis. Ninety-five percent of the 23,000 acres it then owned in Myrtle Beach remained undeveloped.

BROADWAY AT THE BEACH

In 1995, Burroughs & Chapin opened Broadway at the Beach, a 350-acre entertainment complex around a 23-acre lake. It was inspired largely by the theater scene at Branson, Missouri, and was developed in partnership with Springfield, Missouri’s John Q. Hammons, at a cost of $250 million.

Within a couple of years, a miniature golf course was added to Broadway at the Beach featuring an animated fire-breathing dragon. Burroughs & Chapin had begun building its own miniature golf courses with Captain Hook’s Adventure Golf, which opened in 1993.

In 1997, Burroughs & Chapin bought the existing Myrtle Waves Water Park, which boasted the world’s tallest water slide. The next year, it built a NASCARthemed “Speed Park” in Myrtle Beach. Others followed within a few years as far away as Sevierville, Tennessee; St. Louis, Missouri; and Toronto, Ontario, in Canada.

The Grande Dunes resort was developed in the late 1990s. Spread across 2,200 acres, it featured award-winning golf courses, condominiums, luxury hotels, a marina, and other upscale accoutrements. A privately funded bridge linked parts of the property across the Intracoastal Waterway.

Not all of the company’s proposed developments went as planned. In 1997 the company withdrew from a project to build a Jazzland theme park in New Orleans, saying a more promising opportunity had come up. A couple of years later the company bought land near Columbia, South Carolina, for a proposed multiuse development called Green Diamond; this, however, stalled after environmentalists complained about its location in a floodplain.

KEY DATES

1895:: Burroughs & Collins Company is incorporated as a mercantile, farming, and real estate business.
1908:: Myrtle Beach Pavilion and Boardwalk is built by Burroughs & Collins.
1912:: Myrtle Beach Farms Company is formed by the Burroughs family and Simeon B. Chapin.
1948:: The Pavilion is rebuilt after burning down.
1970:: The Pavilion adds a roller coaster to become a full-fledged amusement park.
1990:: Burroughs & Collins merges with Myrtle Beach Farms to form Burroughs & Chapin.
1995:: Broadway at the Beach, a 350-acre entertainment complex, is developed.
2004:: Coastal Grand-Myrtle Beach mall opens.
2006:: Redevelopment of Myrtle Beach Pavilion begins.

The company was developing more entertainment and shopping concepts through partnerships. In 2002 it began operating ESPN X Games Skateparks at a handful of malls owned by the Mills Corporation. This relationship was later expanded to include NASCAR Speed Parks.

The company’s first timeshare resort, South Beach, opened in 2003. New concepts continued to appear at Broadway at the Beach, including Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville Restaurant and an interactive exhibit based on the famous Confederate submarine the H. L. Hunley.

The Coastal Grand-Myrtle Beach mall opened in March 2004. The project was a joint venture with Tennessee investors CB&L Associates Properties, Inc. The existing Myrtle Square Mall was closed the next year.

Myrtle Beach Pavilion Amusement Park closed after the summer of 2006 and Burroughs & Chapin began preparing the 11-acre site for redevelopment. With a nod to its own corporate history as well as the heritage of the Myrtle Beach community, the company designated certain fixtures for preservation. These included a 1912 vintage Herschell-Spillman Carousel (installed in 1950) and an even older two-ton Baden Band Organ (acquired in 1954) that had been shown at the 1900 World Exposition in Paris.

Frederick C. Ingram