1980s · Community · Article 9 of 20
The Shreve Years: Brierwood Becomes a Neighborhood
In the 1980s Dr. Ward partnered with Larry Shreve to develop the real estate around the course, and home construction in Brierwood took off.
For its first decade and a half, Brierwood was a golf course with homes around it. In the 1980s it became a neighborhood with a golf course in the middle. The change came through a business partnership.
The community's records say that in the 1980s Dr. Ward partnered with Larry Shreve to further develop the real estate around the golf course. That partnership started the construction of a large number of homes, and the records describe a period of rapid development that lasted for a number of years.
The timing was good. The 1980s were boom years for golf along the Grand Strand, and Brunswick County saw new courses open nearby, with The Pearl in the Sunset Beach area among them. Retirees and second-home buyers were discovering the stretch of coast between Wilmington and Myrtle Beach, and an established course in a wooded setting had obvious appeal.
The homes built in this period set the pattern for Brierwood: single-family houses on large lots, with trees left standing and fairways out the back door. Because the 1973 maps had already laid out the lots, the Shreve-era construction filled in a plan that had been waiting for a decade.
The same decade produced the community's oldest surviving organization. The Brierwood Ladies Club was founded in 1986, at the height of the building boom, and it is still meeting today.