Horry County to explore Conway area for location of public shooting range

Horry County staff will look at revamping the Conway City Shooting Range as part of plans to open a public gun range.

Horry County’s public safety committee met Monday and also re-iterated it does not want the county to run the range, but rather a private operator.

The county has been looking at opening a gun range for years, and after some prompting from area legislators, the S.C. Department of Natural Resources and the opportunity for a $1 million grant from the state, the county began moving quicker on the idea.

Five sites were identified as potential locations for the range — two sites in and near the Cool Springs Business Park, a tract of land on Solid Waste Authority property on S.C. 90, the county’s old Coquina mine site on S.C. 9, and the Conway shooting range off John Doctor Road.

Council Chairman Mark Lazarus, who is serving on the committee due to the vacancy created by Councilman Bob Grabowski’s death, said he and other councilmen have heard feedback from residents about the range’s impact.

“We’re getting a lot of push back on the [Solid Waste Authority] site,” Lazarus said. “There are a lot of homes out there and it’s developing more and more everyday... There homes near the [Coquina mine] site. I thought that would be a pretty good site, but we have problems there with homes. We got a lot of push back from the PTR and Cool Springs site from a development standpoint.”

There are nearly 365,000 target shooters throughout the state and the county would hope to draw on that cultural appeal. County officials estimated the range would cost about $86,500 annually to staff and operate. The county hopes to pay for that primarily with revenues from memberships and $6 per person shooter fees.

County officials rated each site based on a number of criteria, including improvement costs, proximity to residential areas, accessibility and size of property.

Horry County has three privately owned shooting ranges – Myrtle Beach Indoor Shooting Range, 707 Indoor Shooting Range and The Gun Store & Indoor Range – and no publicly owned ranges.

Lazarus suggested removing plans for a skeet and clay range and focus on the public gun range and a place where local police can conduct target practice.

“When you take out all of these other things and look at what we can do there, maybe we can get some ideas of what it’s going to cost to bring some fill in there, clean that place up and fix it up to where it’s usable,” Lazarus said.

Steve Gosnell, assistant county administrator for infrastructure and regulation, said the county will actively seek organizations and businesses to operate the range.

“We’ll work on a formal cost estimate now that we know that’s the site to focus on, and we’ll engage some of the businesses or some of the nonprofits’ interest in management,” Gosnell said.

Lazarus said he does not want the county to miss out on the grant money and thinks the selection of the Conway property makes most sense without disturbing residents or hindering economic development opportunities, like some said would happen in Cool Springs.

“We would like to have it and we certainly don’t want to turn down a nice grant that is coming our way and the SCDNR really wants it, too,” Lazarus said. “There’s been a gun range there. It’s not like we’re creating something new in someone’s neighborhood.”

This story was originally published April 13, 2015 at 9:07 PM with the headline "Horry County to explore Conway area for location of public shooting range."