‘I think we can make it happen’: Big Horry County rural civic arena project moves forward
Horry County leaders have selected a site for a future civic arena, a significant step for the major project.
Those leaders, however, selected the site in a private meeting and aren’t saying which site they’re now studying, citing fears that the property owner could increase the price and charge the county more than the land is worth.
“The price would just go ape s---,” said County Councilman Johnny Vaught, who is a part of a committee pursuing the project.
The civic arena, expected to be built in a rural part of Horry County near Highway 22, will be a major project for the county that includes indoor space for events like farm shows, livestock trading, weddings, graduations and large meetings. Friday’s meeting was the third time the committee met to discuss the project and marked one of the first concrete steps taken to get the project closer to a ground breaking.
Now, county staff are assessing the site selected to see if a multi-building arena, complete with parking, an RV park and other amenities could fit, and how much it would cost to build. Vaught said he hopes to see the first phase of the project built by 2024 or 2025.
“It’s great to see the community come together on something like this and I think once the real word gets out into the community ... I think we’re going to get lots and lots of support for it,” Vaught said.
Modeled after Clemson University’s T. Ed Garrison Arena in Pendleton, Horry County’s civic arena will be a multi-building, multi-acre campus of event buildings, horse trails, an RV park, event parking and, Vaught hopes, a shooting range. Chris Heintze, the director of the T. Ed Garrison Arena, gave a presentation to the committee on Friday, explaining how Clemson University built and operates its arena and offering best practices.
The project is a joint effort by Horry County and Horry Electric Cooperative to build a large event space for government and public use alike, including Horry Electric’s annual member meeting which several thousand people attend each year.
To pay for the project, the county will utilize the $400,000 annual payments Horry Electric makes to the county. The Cooperative makes those payments because it receives a rural infrastructure tax credit. In other words, Horry Electric gets a discount on its taxes if it puts money towards infrastructure, like a civic arena, in a rural area.
According to a letter sent by the state Department of Revenue to Horry Electric in June, the cooperative is allowed to send those $400,000 annual payments to Horry County to be used on the civic arena. In turn, that means the county could use the money to help pay back a bond that would fund the project.
At the committee’s November 2019 meeting, Barry Spivey, an assistant county administrator, said the $400,000 annual payments could allow the county to issue a bond valued between $6 and $7.5 million. Bonds are debt that governments issue to allow them to fund significant capital projects like new buildings, roads and bridges. Using a dedicated revenue stream like taxes, or in this case an annual payment from Horry Electric, the county would pay back the cost of the bond plus interest over a period of time, rather than all at once.
Vaught said the civic arena would likely be built in phases, meaning that the county could issue multiple bonds as it builds out the arena over the coming years.
The county’s move forward on the civic arena comes as its had to navigate a tighter budget due to the COVID-19 pandemic. At a recent county council meeting, county officials explained that the pandemic caused revenue shortfalls that its made up for through a hiring freeze on non-essential positions and pausing capital projects. Despite that, the funding from Horry Electric could allow the county to pay for the arena without dipping into tax revenues.
“It’s like walking through the woods and not knowing which log to kick, there’s snakes under every one of them,” Vaught said at Friday’s meeting, referring to the precarious nature of moving forward on a major project with the county’s financial future uncertain. “We’ve got some ideas, and I think we can make it happen, just understand that that’s one of our major constraints ... now because of this COVID thing.”
