New Carolina Forest hospital closer to green lights after months of drama. What changed?

After a community meeting Tuesday evening, Carolina Forest residents, Horry County officials and leaders of the Conway Medical Center all appeared to agree on how plans for a new hospital along International Drive should proceed, following months of back-and-forth negotiations and disagreements.

The South Carolina Dept. of Natural Resources, another stakeholder in the plans, signaled recently that it may be amenable to the compromise the county, hospital and residents discussed.

The compromise would have CMC place its new hospital in the middle of a 380-acre parcel along International Drive, away from both the Lewis Ocean Bay Heritage Preserve, which DNR owns and controls, and The Farm neighborhood, which has seen some residents turn out to public meetings to oppose the project. That would create a buffer between The Farm and the new hospital.

But to locate the hospital there, in the middle of the tract, DNR would have to agree to move a road-closure gate it uses to block access to International Drive when it conducts controlled burns of the Lewis Ocean Bay forest. CMC officials say moving the gate is needed because traffic and ambulances would need to reach the hospital during times when DNR conducts burns. Those burns are necessary, DNR officials have said, because they help prevent uncontrollable wildfires from affecting the surrounding homes and community, and help foster a unique environmental habitat within the forest.

If the DNR is in fact agreeable to the compromise, which would involve moving the gate on International Drive that it has partial control over, it could mean that plans for the new 50-bed hospital may get county approval in coming weeks. If so, it would mark the end of nearly six months of disagreements which included strongly-worded letters from DNR and angry residents at public meetings.

According to the compromise, CMC could build in the middle of the tract if the road-closure gates closest to The Farm are moved West, toward Highway 90, about 1,400 feet.

Asked in early April if DNR would be amenable to moving the road-closure gates at all, DNR Director Robert Boyles said he believed Horry County had most of the authority to move those gates.

“I think that’s a county decision,” Boyles said. “The gates were there because smoke and traffic don’t always mix well, so that’s a public safety thing. We want to burn, we have a limited window in which we can, so those are things we can probably work out.”

On Tuesday, David Jordan, an attorney with Horry County and the acting director of the planning department, said he believed DNR had authority over where the gates are located, but added that the county would be willing to move them if DNR was. After Tuesday’s meeting, County Council member Bill Howard said he asked Jordan to contact DNR’s attorneys and discuss if it was possible to move the gates.

David Lucas, a spokesperson for DNR, said Wednesday that the agency would “carefully consider” any plans to move the gates. He noted in an email that the gates were installed originally to help protect drivers during controlled burns, but didn’t discount the idea of moving them.

“Any modification of the current easement between SCDNR and the County would require agreement of both parties,” he wrote. “Any plan or agreement that would involve moving of the gates would have to be carefully considered. SCDNR has an obligation to protect, conserve and manage the pine savanna ecosystems at Lewis Ocean Bay Heritage Preserve.”

Reaching a compromise on moving the road-closure gates — and by extension CMC’s planned hospital — could also have bigger implications for Horry County. As part of it’s current $600 million road-building program, RIDE 3, Horry County purchased 3,700 acres next door to CMC’s site so that it can preserve wetlands there in exchange for wetlands it will harm elsewhere as it builds new roads. Federal rules mandate that wetlands harmed should be made up for by preserving wetlands, and allows builders to earn, buy and sell what’s called wetland mitigation credits to do so. Horry County could earn up to 4,000 mitigation credits on its International Drive property.

But if moving the gate and having CMC build its hospital harms the county’s wetland mitigation bank in any way, officials said, the whole road building program could be disrupted, and they’d oppose both the gate moving and the hospital. How moving the gates could affect the mitigation bank is likely to be a key factor in the decision to move them or not.

“I can table this whole project if I have to,” Howard said Tuesday, speaking to both resident concerns about the hospital and concerns that the project could impact the RIDE program. “I can be overruled by a majority of the council, but I am here to try to get the best for you, not for the hospital.”

The compromise

For Richard and Judy McAndrew, CMC’s proposed hospital is OK as long as it doesn’t bring flooding, traffic or noise close their home. The couple, originally from Massachusetts, moved to Carolina Forest full-time in 2015 and live at the end of a cul-de-sac in The Farm that’s close to where CMC wants to build.

But, Judy McAndrew said, if CMC agrees to place a significant buffer in between the hospital and their neighborhood, she’d “feel better” about the project.

“If they move (the gate) up then it doesn’t bother me,” she said. “Our biggest issue is that road coming in, and pushing water closer to the property. And the noise.”

When CMC originally proposed its new hospital last year, it first suggested placing the hospital on the far West end of the property, close to Horry County’s mitigation bank. But that plan drew concern from Boyles — who sent a letter to county officials calling a hospital in the area “not compatible” with DNR’s controlled burns at the Lewis Ocean Bay Preserve. The plan also drew concern from county officials that the hospital could impact their mitigation bank, and imperil the RIDE 3 program.

In response, CMC redesigned its plans and instead moved the hospital to the far East end of the property, close to The Farm. But those designs drew the ire of nearby residents who told county planners at a public meeting that they worried a hospital in their backyards would bring stormwater runoff, excessive noise and light pollution to their homes.

That would leave two other possible locations within the property for a new hospital. The 380 acres CMC is looking to purchase for the hospital is mostly wetlands, with four thin areas — or “fingers” — of uplands able to be built on. On Tuesday, in response to comments and concerns from about two dozen Carolina Forest residents who attended a community meeting, CMC officials proposed building the hospital on finger number two, which would leave two tracts of wetlands and finger number one in between the hospital and The Farm.

Bret Barr, the CEO and president of CMC, said Tuesday that he approved of the idea to build on finger two.

“I like the idea,” he said during the meeting.

“We’ve been on three of the four fingers,” he joked afterwards. “We started on the far West end, and DNR wrote that letter so we were like, ‘Okay, well, we don’t want to upset them.’ So we went to the far other side and The Farm was like, ‘Hey! Not in our backyard!’ So, two and three, that’s a good compromise.”

Brian Argo, CMC’s chief financial officer, agreed.

“The takeaway is, for us, it was a great meeting because we heard the constituents of The Farm, they posed a solution, we pondered it, we’re going to evaluate it and we’ll look at it,” he said. “There’s no reason for us to not seriously consider it.”

CMC’s planned hospital, first announced in early September, would include an emergency room and offer women’s health, surgical, cancer care, orthopedics, and imaging services. The $150 million project would include eight labor and delivery rooms and two C-section rooms for expecting mothers, six intensive care beds, three operating rooms and a six-bay infusion center. The 50 beds would be transferred from Conway Medical Center’s primary 210-bed facility in Conway. Barr said previously that CMC is still working on plans for what it will do with the freed-up space in its Conway hospital.

Horry County could benefit

Having CMC build its new hospital on the second finger of uplands on its tract could also have a big bonus for Horry County: It would get some of the unused land.

According to a draft of a development agreement between CMC and Horry County, CMC would give fingers three and four of the uplands, and the surrounding wetlands, to Horry County before it receives the building permits it needs. Though Horry County wouldn’t be able to add that land to it’s mitigation bank next door — Jordan said there’s a small section of land the county doesn’t own in between the two properties — the property could nonetheless benefit future county projects.

For one, according to the development agreement, one of the uplands tracts could be used as a parking lot and “recreational uses,” meaning the county could, hypothetically, use that area as an entrance to hiking trails through its mitigation bank property one day.

County leaders have also said that extending Gardner Lacy Road from its current end in Carolina Forest out to International Drive is a project that could break ground in the near future. That road would likely run through, or in between, part of the land the county owns and part of the CMC property.

The development agreement also says CMC and the county will work together to move the gate along International Drive, though it doesn’t specify how many feet. For CMC to build on finger one, the gate would have to move a few hundred feet, and for CMC to build on finger two, the gate would have to move approximately 1,400 feet.

County Council is slated to vote on the development agreement later this month, and is slated to vote on CMC’s rezoning plans in June.

Moving the gate

For the compromise to work, though, DNR would have to agree to move the road-closure gate.

The gates on International Drive aren’t used frequently — usually for a week or so every year to 18 months — but are nonetheless important to keep drivers out of harms way when DNR workers conduct controlled burns at the Lewis Ocean Bay Heritage Preserve. The environment in the preserve, as well as across the road in the county’s mitigation bank, is wet pine savanna wetlands, home to black bears, woodpeckers, venus fly traps and Carolina Bays, which themselves foster a unique habitat.

DNR has said controlled burns are necessary to allow that habitat to thrive, and to help prevent uncontrollable wildfires from sparking in the area and spreading to communities along Highway 90 and in Carolina Forest.

Because of that, said Rikki Parker, an advocate with the South Carolina Coastal Conservation League, no building at all should occur on the site.

“That property is so nearby to the Lewis Ocean Bay Preserve that we just want to be really careful about what development looks like in proximity to that natural resource,” she said. “It’s just not the right place.”

The gates have been in place along International Drive since the road was built several years ago, and were put in place thanks to an agreement between the county and DNR. Though Boyles signaled that DNR could be willing to renegotiate where those gates are located, that decision will ultimately have to be made jointly by both county and DNR officials.

Howard said he’d like those discussions to happen, and added that he’d push CMC to build on that second finger of uplands, because that was the option residents approved of.

“I think they got the point, I think they’ll go back to the drawing board because the buffer is very important,” he said. “I’m going to be very observant of what they do. I’m here for the constituents, not the developers.”

It’s not clear, however, if DNR will ultimately agree to move the gates as far as would be needed for CMC to build where it wants to.

Residents, though, are on board with the idea.

“There are some simple and logical solutions to the whole thing. If you move the gate, you move the road back, “ said John Kearsley, who’s lived at The Farm for more than a decade now.

In fact, he joked, he’d be willing to do it himself, to ensure the compromise is enacted.

“I have a sledge hammer and a pick, I’ll go move it myself,” he joked. “Saturday night, come down and help me out.”

This story was originally published May 13, 2021 at 11:58 AM.