Sunday, Mar. 26, 2006

Amid apathy, hope glimmers in town

EDITOR'S NOTE: This story was originally published on Sunday, March 26, 2006

It was hard for me not to give up hope on Atlantic Beach after watching from afar all that went wrong in the town a couple of weeks ago.

If town officials can't even put a police officer on the street every day, it should be disbanded or absorbed by Horry County or North Myrtle Beach, I thought.

Then I met Amy Breunig. She hasn't given up.

She's spent months buying six run-down buildings and other property and restoring them, providing quality, affordable housing in an area that's been depressed far too long.

"We need young, vibrant people who have vision and old experienced people who have faith," she said.

She's in the young with vision group. She's a 27-year-old from Connecticut who lives in Windy Hill, just a few blocks from 30th Avenue, the main drag through Atlantic Beach. She's white and trying to help restore an almost-all black town in which the color of one's skin is, unfortunately, more important than the content of one's character.

Breunig is a trained and registered pediatric nurse but realized her ability to restore buildings - to see promise where others see trash - is a calling.

"I think certain people have a path in life," she said. "I think this is mine."

She's quick to point out the good others are also trying to do within the town. Breunig told me Donnell Thompson is building elevated beach homes. Another resident, with help from a Little River resident, founded an Atlantic Beach Girl Scout troop recently.

The Kelly family is pushing forward with its plans to revitalize the town's oceanfront. Police officer Janice Schwartz has volunteered to make stained-glass windows and gives Breunig tips on how to make her buildings safe.

The Rev. Windy Price is restoring her church. Interim Town Manager Marcia Conner is writing grants and has generated professional planning ideas.

Breunig, who has already begun making a profit on her first restored building, The French Quarter, said more people need to help and the Grand Strand's perception of Atlantic Beach needs to change.

The town's officers are overworked and underpaid, which paves the way for drug deals to be conducted in plain sight, she said. That's the town's biggest problem - drug dealing and addiction - which is complicated by persistent poverty and unemployment, she said.

It's so bad the Drug Enforcement Agency owns two lots near Breunig's buildings, property confiscated during drug busts. She tried to buy them but said the agency was asking for too much.

But there is no rampant violence, she said.

"People have this idea that if you stand on the street you are going to get hurt," Breunig said. "I took the bars off the windows and used them in the garden as a gate. You don't need bars. I haven't had any windows broken. Nobody has tried to shoot me."

And she's strolled the streets at midnight and 2 a.m., tending to her buildings.

The perception that Atlantic Beach is dangerous and beyond repair makes Breunig's job tough.

She called a granite countertop seller, told him she needed an order for 15 kitchens. He thought she was joking. Accurate property appraisals are hard to attain because so much of the town's buildings are dilapidated.

Someone told her to not waste money on some improvements, because it's only Atlantic Beach.

Banks balk at lending money for projects in the town, Breunig said. Bankers at NBSC and Beach First know what she has done elsewhere and helped, she said.

She called electrician after electrician to rewire the buildings she's trying to restore. All turned her down until she reached Jack Frye of Reliable Electric in North Myrtle Beach.

Frye came because he "grew up in a poor black neighborhood in Philadelphia," he said, so he has been through it before. Frye is white.

He has seen worse places that have been revitalized.

"Atlantic Beach can be brilliant," he said.

Others have noticed Breunig's presence. Conner said the town appreciates her work because "any improvements to our community is a plus."

Landowner Mike Kelly, whose family has plans to build on the oceanfront and a commercial building near U.S. 17, said he hopes others follow Breunig's lead, but so far many haven't.

"We, as a community of landowners, need to catch up with her," Kelly said. "We need to stop the rhetoric and take action. We've been [talking] now for 40 years."

Breunig is confident in her plans. She is restoring those six buildings, plans to build elevated patio homes and wants to provide hope for the kids living within the town's four blocks.

That's why she's donating playground equipment to Price's church and is asking other people throughout the Grand Strand - and particularly in North Myrtle Beach - to follow her lead and maybe help fund a baseball field or a bus so children in the town can visit the Grand Strand's attractions.

"It's kind of baby steps here every day. If I can just get someone else to come and do something, too," she said. "People need to not ignore this [town]."

Contact ISSAC J. BAILEY at 626-0357.