Officials planning industrial park for North Myrtle Beach area

Business leaders plan to build an industrial park somewhere in northeastern Horry County for the North Myrtle Beach community.

Local officials have been quietly looking at sites in the S.C. 22 corridor, though they haven’t revealed which ones they are eyeing.

“As close to North Myrtle Beach as we can get it,” said Marc Jordan, president of the North Myrtle Beach Chamber of Commerce, which is leading the effort to establish a park. “We’re going to do it. We believe the product is needed.”

Developing an industrial park is one of the goals of Build North Myrtle Beach, a campaign the chamber launched several years ago to diversify and grow the area’s economy.

Jordan stressed that the chamber doesn’t want to see smokestacks on the tourism-dependent landscape. Local leaders envision research and development firms and light manufacturing building on the site.

“We’re talking about a clean park,” he said.

Horry County already has a handful of public industrial parks, including the 400-acre International Technology and Aerospace Park (ITAP) in Myrtle Beach. Local officials have spent millions adding utilities, roads and signs to make ITAP ready for businesses to move in, but for three years the property has remained empty.

Despite the struggles with ITAP, business leaders insist North Myrtle Beach needs property with the utilities and infrastructure that industries demand.

Jordan said local officials are often asked about the availability of such a site by business owners, but they have nothing to show them.

With the rapid growth along the North Strand, Jordan said land values will continue to rise, making purchasing a suitable site more difficult if leaders put off those plans.

“The time is now,” he said. “If we don’t do it now, it’ll have to be 30 miles from us.”

Josh Kay, the newly hired president of the Myrtle Beach Regional Economic Development Corp. (EDC), agreed that building a North Strand industrial park is important.

“The greater North Myrtle Beach area really offers a lot of benefits in regards to transportation, utilities and also a population density,” he said. “Right now, we don’t have a site in that part of the county.”

Along with ITAP, the county also has the Atlantic Center off U.S. 501, which holds multiple businesses; the Cool Springs Business Park in Aynor, which sat vacant for six years until gun maker PTR Industries arrived in 2013; the Loris Industrial Park, which is adding its fifth business; and the Pine Ridge Industrial Park, which consists of mostly empty land near the county jail on U.S. 701 north of Conway. Additionally, the EDC markets several privately-owned industrial sites.

The county is also developing a marine industrial park in the Bucksport area. Business leaders tout that park as a possible magnet for yacht manufacturers. They say those businesses could bring much-needed jobs to the economically-depressed community south of Conway off U.S. 701.

EDC Chairman Fred Richardson said he hopes the Bucksport project will receive a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the coming months.

Once the Corps signs off on the park, Richardson said that would allow local leaders to pursue permits for the structures and construction. The most pressing question, however, remains unanswered.

“The bigger step is coming up with how to fund it,” Richardson said.

That’s also a challenge for the proposed North Myrtle Beach park, though the chamber hopes to line up private and public funding sources for the project. The chamber has been working on the park for more than a year and Jordan estimates spending at least another 18 months finding a site and working out all the details.

Jordan pointed out that Build North Myrtle Beach has generated strong private sector support and the industrial park is another part of that initiative.

“We’re just following what we’ve said all along,” he said.

Despite the space available at the other parks, the EDC’s Kay said adding a North Myrtle Beach site would give him another property to pitch to out-of-town business owners.

“You always want to have as many tools in the tool box [as you can],” he said. “So that we can go out and sell all of Horry County.”

This story was originally published December 23, 2015 at 11:56 PM with the headline "Officials planning industrial park for North Myrtle Beach area."