After community pressure, Horry County considers a building moratorium near Highway 90
For Mary Anders, the traffic along Highway 90 — caused by the increase of new homes and residents there — has become terrifying, and even life-threatening at times.
For Kurt Starks, Horry County and the South Carolina Department of Transportation have done a poor job at managing stormwater along Highway 90, causing part of his property to flood.
And for Ricky Gunter, the new subdivisions along the once-rural corridor aren’t being built with large-enough stormwater retention ponds, worsening flooding in the area.
All three of the residents, who live along or near SC-90, spoke at large community meeting Thursday to express their concerns that Horry County leaders aren’t doing enough to control the explosive growth the area has seen in recent years. Highway 90, originally a two-lane, farm-to-market road connecting area farms to Conway and North Myrtle Beach, has become a focal point recently as developers have constructed thousands of new homes along the corridor in recent years. Residents say that the growth is changing the once-rural landscape they love, causing an increase in flooding on their properties and in their homes, and an increase in traffic accidents that are sometimes deadly.
Now, after months of hearing such complaints from residents, Horry County leaders say they’re willing to curb the rapid development along the road, at least until the county and state governments can catch up on needed infrastructure, including raising and widening parts of Highway 90.
That was the biggest takeaway from Thursday night’s community meeting focused on growth and development along SC-90 at the Tilly Swamp Baptist Church, which more than 300 residents attended. After hearing residents speak for more than two hours, both County Council member Johnny Vaught and Council Member Danny Hardee, who both represent part of the corridor, said they’re willing to consider pausing development along the road.
“(Let’s put) a moratorium on rezoning from Highway 22 to Conway until we can say, ‘Here is the money, this is what we’re doing,’” Hardee said after the meeting. “Something’s got be doing, we can’t just keep saying ‘Well, we’re going to try to slow things down.’”
Even some state lawmakers are on board with those plans.
“We do need to work with the county, we need to reign in development,” said SC Rep. Tim McGinnis (R-Myrtle Beach), adding that state lawmakers like himself need to help Horry County secure funding for the infrastructure needs along Highway 90.
What such a moratorium might look like is still up in the air, though Hardee said he’s asked county staff to draw up a proposed ordinance that the council can debate at its next meeting. Vaught said that either a moratorium on new building permits along Highway 90, or a moratorium on new rezoning are the two likeliest options the council could consider.
If a moratorium were to pause all new building, Vaught said it wouldn’t affect any builders who have already gotten county permits for a project. If a moratorium were to pause new rezoning, building under current zoning — which is mostly the broad Commercial Forest Agriculture category along Highway 90 — would still be allowed. That would mean that while new subdivisions with 10,000 sq. ft. lots couldn’t be built, but subdivisions with half-acre lots, or even three-story apartment buildings, could be built.
“It depends. It could be both,” Vaught said about a potential moratorium. “If somebody has already been permitted we can’t stop them, it’s not right, because they already have money in the deal. (But) if they’re in the design stage on it, yeah, I don’t see the problem with pausing. The rezoning goes right along with it.”
If Horry County does institute a moratorium of some kind, both Vaught and Hardee said it would be temporary until the county can catch up on needed infrastructure in the area. That’s likely to include the opening of the new Nixonville-area fire station along Highway 90, as well as the raising and widening of parts of the road.
Vaught said it would likely make the most sense cost-wise for the county to raise and widen three sections of Highway 90: A portion running through Sterrit Swamp, a portion running through Tilly Swamp and a portion running through Jones Big Swamp. Those are all lower-lying areas, he said, and raising and widening the road in those places could both alleviate flooding and ease traffic. Widening all of Highway 90, nearly two-dozen miles, could cost close to $500 million, county leaders have said.
Vaught said he’d like to see the moratorium last until those projects are completed. Hardee estimated that could take up to eight years, or even longer.
“I hate to say it but it’s probably going to have to be when (Highway 90) is four lanes and we’re probably looking at eight to 10 years,” Hardee said. “I hate to do it, I don’t want to do it, but we’ve got to be realistic and it’s going to take some work.”
Though specifics on a moratorium aren’t yet worked out, the idea saw broad support Thursday night. And in Vaught’s case, that support could mean pressure at home.
“I’ll tell you right now, my favorite word is moratorium, until we get the infrastructure in,” said Ruthie Vaught-Warren, Vaught’s sister.
Caveats to a moratorium
Despite Horry County leaders being willing to implement a moratorium along Highway 90, such a policy would come with caveats.
And such caveats would become significant if the council opts for a rezoning moratorium. Under that scenario, developers wouldn’t be allowed to apply to rezone parcels of land to allow for higher-density housing or other projects, as they do now. But developers would be allowed to build under the current zoning of a piece of land, and much of the land along Highway 90 is zoned Commercial Forest Agriculture.
That zoning classification was only adopted in the 1990s, and was written to be broad enough to allow for a wide variety of uses, from working farms, to apartment buildings, to some businesses, to churches. The CFA zoning classification was designed so broadly, according to former county planners, to appease landowners in the Western part of Horry County who opposed county-wide zoning and wanted to retain broad rights for the land they owned.
In the case of a moratorium, the CFA zoning would allow for homes on half-acre lots and even some multi-family housing, though not the denser subdivisions with smaller lots.
April O’Leary, a community organizer who founded Horry County Rising several years ago, pointed out at Thursday’s meeting that County Council has the ability to amend the zoning code and that she and other advocates had asked county leaders to strip some land uses out of CFA, to better preserve the rural parts of the county and slow development.
“You have the authority to change what is allowed,” O’Leary said. “We’ve asked you to look at CFA.”
David Jordan, the county planning director, said earlier this month that the Planning Commission had previously studied stripping higher-density land uses from CFA, but that the changes didn’t move forward.
“Really take a critical look at your current zoning practices,” O’Leary said.
Residents seeing progress
For several years now, residents from the Conway and Highway 90 area have been organizing around issues of flooding and development, and some said Thursday that they feel like their efforts are beginning to pay off.
Tammy Baker, who lives near Lee’s Landing, has circulated a petition calling for a rezoning moratorium along Highway 90 in recent weeks, and has gathered more than 600 signatures from her neighbors. Baker has said she’s okay with new homes built on lots half-an-acre or larger, as long as the county is doing enough to keep up with infrastructure and public safety needs. Baker has also said she hopes to preserve the rural nature of the community, where residents like herself can have some privacy on their property.
After Thursday’s meeting, Baker said she liked the idea of raising and widening Highway 90 in several sections and felt like county leaders were listening to concerns that she and other residents have been raising.
Felicia Soto, another resident who’s advocated for change along the Highway 90 corridor, and the one who organized Thursday’s meeting, said she was encouraged by what state and county leaders said last night, and that she’s hopeful their promises will come to fruition.
Soto said she’s hopeful that South Carolina and Horry County will be able to make money available to widen parts of Highway 90 available soon, and that those leaders have heard the cries to keep residents safe from traffic accidents, flooding and over-development in their communities.
And if they don’t? Soto said she and other residents will keep the pressure on those leaders.
“Southern people are the sweetest, kindest people in the world but they’ve kind of just sat back. We’re not sitting back anymore, and they’re not sitting back. We are a community,” Soto, who grew up in Brooklyn, New York, said. “We’re going to stay on them, this is only one of many meetings. This is not one of those things where it’s a meeting today and now it’s over and that’s the end of it. No, you don’t know me.”
