‘It’s not a moratorium’: Horry County seeks to curb growth on Highway 90
For months, residents who live along or near Horry County’s Highway 90 — a once-farm-to-market road that connects Conway to North Myrtle Beach — have been calling on local leaders to respond to the rapid growth along the corridor.
The growth in the area has congested the mostly two-lane road, with increased vehicle accidents and making it more difficult for first responders to reach them, residents say. The growth has also made flooding in the area worse, and those who chose to live in a rural area complain that the county is allowing suburban sprawl to reach their backyards.
As residents organized this year, some have called for the county to slow the building along the highway, and hundreds signed a petition calling on the county to place a moratorium on new high-density land rezonings.
Now, county council members are moving forward on a plan to pause rezonings along Highway 90 from it’s start at Highway 501 (Business) to its intersection with Highway 22.
But there’s a catch: It’s not a moratorium on construction, and all building that doesn’t require a land rezoning can continue. Much of the land along Highway 90 that has not been rezoned to residential in recent years is labeled as Commercial-Forest-Agriculture, a broad zoning category that allows homes — two per acre — as well as apartment buildings, businesses and more to be built.
“It’s not a moratorium, it’s a new process,” Horry County Planning Director David Jordan explained to County Council members this week. “We’ll process any rezoning application under state law but this is telling us and the Planning Commission that we will not recommend approval.”
Still, the pause on rezonings marks one of the most significant responses by county government to the area’s rapid growth and development to date. Previously, County Council approved a pause on rezonings along a portion of Highway 57, in the North Myrtle Beach area. And last month, the council voted to approve impact fees for the first time, a fee charged on all new construction that can be used to pay for infrastructure projects.
Amelia Wood, one of the residents who lives in the Higway 90 area, and who’s played a key role in organizing against the rapid development, said Tuesday that the pause on rezonings was a start, and that she hopes county leaders will amend development regulations to better control growth.
“I think the petition accomplished our goals of getting attention to the issue,” she said, noting that stopping all growth was likely not possible, and that she and other residents knew that. “We knew we couldn’t stop that, there’s just no way to stop it, a change in the land development regulations is what’s needed.”
County Council members, too, view the rezoning pause as “a start” and acknowledge that the county needs to better respond to the public safety and infrastructure needs of the area.
“It’s a start. It’s not taking care of all the needs, we’ve got flooding issues and all, but we’ve got to start somewhere,” County Council member Danny Hardee, who represents part of the Highway 90 corridor.
Hardee said County Council plans to keep the pause in place until the county has dedicated funding and designs for how it will raise and widen parts of the highway.
“The resolution we’re looking at is to leave it in place until we can get some direction, until we can say, ‘This money is coming here, we got a start date here, get something going,’” he said. “We can’t just keep saying, ‘Well, we’re working on it, we’re working on it, we’re working on it’ and keep building, building and building.”
How the rezoning pause will work
The plan Horry County is pursuing is a resolution, rather than an ordinance, meaning that the legislation merely expresses the council’s collective will, rather than carrying the force of law.
That means that builders can still apply to rezone land along Highway 90, and that county planning staff will still process those applications. It’s even possible that some rezonings could be approved. But the resolution sends a signal to builders that members of Planning Commission and members of County Council will likely vote their applications down.
Additionally, any rezonings that have already been approved will be allowed to continue on, and those projects will be built. And any project a builder wants to develop without a rezoning will be allowed to continue on, too.
“The public needs to understand that the resolution does not stop construction,” Planning Commission member Pam Dawson explained. “Projects in process, projects submitted under straight zoning can proceed with no intervention.”
But like the earlier rezoning pause on Highway 57, the pause along Highway 90 sends a signal to developers that they shouldn’t pursue rezonings in that area.
“My standpoint is, lets get a resolution in place. That expresses the opinion of council that we do not intend to approve rezonings of this kind,” said County Council member Johnny Vaught, who’s Conway-adjacent district also includes part of Highway 90.
At a community meeting at Tilly Swamp Baptist Church last month, and again on Tuesday, County Council members said they’d likely keep a rezoning pause in place until they had money and plans to raise and widen parts of Highway 90. Vaught has expressed support for raising and widening three sections of the road that run through the three swamps — Steritt Swamp, Jones Big Swamp and Tilly Swamp. Hardee suggested raising and widening the section of the road from International Drive to Highway 22.
“We may not be able to do the whole road from one end to another, but at least from Highway 22 to International Drive, that would give them an avenue in both directions to get out,” Hardee said.
Horry County previously considered widening Highway 90 as part of its RIDE 3 road-building program, but canceled plans for the project after estimates came in that it could take up to $550 million to widen the whole length of the road. The RIDE 3 program — which collects a sales tax to pay for infrastructure — will complete around $600 million worth of projects by the time it expires in 2025.
That means Horry County will need state or federal funding — or a fourth RIDE program — to foot the bill for the tens of millions needed to improve sections of Highway 90. Hardee said he and other council members plan to meet with officials from the state Dept. of Transportation to discuss Highway 90. Hardee said he hopes the state will be willing to allocate money to the effort, as the road is a state-owned road.
In the meantime, though, growth along Highway 90 is likely to continue. Currently, 5,000 units of housing are already slated for construction based off of rezonings and plans that the county has already approved. And even with the pause on rezonings, developers could move forward on high-density housing projects, like apartment buildings.
Hardee said he’s well aware of those dynamics, but said he doubted that developers would move forward on apartment buildings all along the road.
“I can assure you if a man’s got a piece of property and he’s got money invested in it, he’s going to try to capitalize on it in whatever way he can,” he said. But, he added, “If you put apartments there, the public’s going to be out there, they’d rather houses.”
He said the county is pursuing the changes because leaders needed a place to start.
“What’s already permitted is going to double the capacity of the road so where do you draw the line and where do you start?” he said.
Other changes coming, too
In part because the current Commercial-Forest-Agriculture zoning allows for so many uses, County Council members said they also plan to amend what building can be done under that category, removing the high-density projects from the category.
Though such plans are not in place yet, County Council members said planning staff and the county attorneys are working to draft amendments to the CFA zoning category, and should present their plans to council members in coming weeks.
Vaught said he’d like to see the amendments strip out multi-family housing as one of the allowable uses under CFA.
“That’s one of things we need to address too, CFA is too broad based right now,” he said. “That’s something we’ll be doing is looking over our zoning regs to see where we need to make changes.”
Such a change could give the pause on rezonings more teeth, as the other housing uses allowed under that category place just two homes per acre, something residents in the area have said they support.
Horry County previously examined amending what uses were allowed under CFA, but those plans never passed. County planners drafted the CFA category to be so broad because residents in the 1990s and early 2000s opposed county-wide zoning, when the county was putting such measures in place. The broad category, county planners thought then, would appease those who wanted to retain broad rights to do what they wished on their land.
In the years since, though, developers have used the broadness of CFA to build rapidly, or pressure communities and county leaders to approve their plans.
On Tuesday, Wood said she hoped the amendments to CFA would bring positive change.
“It certainly sounded like they’re headed in the right direction right now,” she said.
An area forever changed
Even though Horry County is now working to curb the rapid development of the Highway 90 corridor, the once-rural area is unlikely to ever return to it’s sparsely-populated roots. For residents like Wood, who moved to the area to live in a rural-yet-convenient location, the changes have been hard to witness, and difficult to live with.
“It makes me feel very bad, and sad, because I moved there 35 years ago and I didn’t move there to be in an urban or suburban area,” she said.
Hardee, though, argued residents uncomfortable with the growth could always move.
“This is a big county and I don’t believe anybody held a gun to anybody’s head and said you’re going to buy out here,” he said. “That’s those people’s choices, there’s other developments further out.”
Still, said Wood, it’s “sad” what’s happened to the area she’s called home for 35 years.
“ It does make me feel sad but that’s just the way life is, so we have to do it the best way we can,” she said. “That’s all we can do.”
This story was originally published August 13, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
