‘Starting to make some headway’: How some in Horry are fighting back against development
This story is part two of a two-part series examining the balance of power in Horry County growth and development. You can read part one here.
Tammy Baker has just about everything she could want in her backyard: Birds, critters and other wildlife she can watch from her back deck; planter boxes full of vegetables and flowers; a built-from-scratch greenhouse that she’s fashioned into a personal hideout and playroom for the grandchildren; proximity to the Waccamaw River; and enough room for all of her husband’s projects. The couple owns a little more than 10 acres, and has called the Highway 90 corridor, outside of Conway, home for years.
In recent years, though, that corridor has exploded with new homes and new residents. The once-rural Highway 90 is now dotted with subdivisions packed with hundreds of homes. Residents, including Baker, say all those new residents contribute to worsening traffic on the roads, and an increase in traffic accidents. Traffic data from the South Carolina Department of Transportation shows that thousands more cars are driving along Highway 90 in a year now than just five years ago. Residents worry that congestion — plus the already-present flooding — could prevent fire trucks or ambulances from reaching people in need.
“This (growth) is really messing up our rural setting,” she said. “You know, I’m a country girl and I have to deal with city traffic.”
In response to the seemingly unhalting growth, Baker has begun circulating a petition among her neighbors calling for a moratorium on rezoning land for new developments, at least until Horry County can widen Highway 90 and increase public safety services in the area. Baker hopes to get county leaders to enact the rezoning moratorium — which could slow the development of new homes — after more of her neighbors sign it.
Doing so, she said, is one of the few tools she has to get Horry County leaders to better respond to residents’ wishes for growth and development in a place where developers have more power than residents when it comes to what gets built, and where.
So far, Baker and her neighbors have collected more than 520 signatures in support of the moratorium until better development protocols are in place.
In the meantime, that organizing appears to be paying off. On Thursday, at a meeting of the Horry County Planning Commission, commission members voted against a development plan for 121 single family homes near Highway 90 and Bear Bluff Road after Baker and some of her neighbors spoke against it.
“Fire safety is a huge concern, we don’t have the infrastructure to provide fire safety,” said Amelia Wood, who lives in the Tilly Swamp area and is part of the moratorium effort. Wood and other residents often point out that the nearest fire station in the area is a volunteer station, meaning that in the event of an emergency, volunteers would have to travel to the station, suit up, and then travel to the scene of the crisis, and residents worry that delay could put them at risk, particularly if traffic is bad.
The County Council will still have to vote on the rezoning proposal in coming weeks — and the developer could currently build fewer homes on the land as it’s zoned now — but Baker said it felt like a victory.
“I was feeling like I was beating my head on a brick wall but now I feel like that headache is starting to be for a reason,” Baker said after Thursday’s meeting. “We’re starting to make some headway, instead of headache.”
Ultimately, said Baker and Wood, they’d like to see a pause in building along the Highway 90 corridor until a more permanent solution can be put in place, like a zoning overlay. That’s a tool that other communities in Horry County have used to set specific rules for what can be built where, and what that building looks like. Areas like Little River and Burgess already have zoning overlays, as so a number of commercial corridors.
“With the petition, what we’re going to try to do is get them to stop the high-density rezonings until we can get the overlay in place,” Baker said in a recent interview. “And then we can continue to develop and develop in a smarter way. And a safer way.”
Taken together, the efforts to change how building is done along Highway 90 illustrate one way that residents are pushing back against what they see as unfettered development in a rapidly-growing county, particularly as that growth pushes further and further West.
Some county leaders see that pushback as a key way that residents can better influence what their communities look and feel like as more and more newcomers call Horry County home.
“When people show up in numbers, when people communicate with their elected officials on an ongoing basis and stay engaged, that’s really important,” said Pamela Dawson, a member of the Planning Commission who voted against the Highway 90 rezoning on Thursday. “It seems like they’re coalescing now but I think as communities coalesce that’s a big component of it.”
Dawson pointed out that the very way bodies like Planning Commission are set up — with mandates that a certain number of members be building professionals — causes developers to have an advantage over residents. But, she said, residents coming together can force county leaders to work with them on new developments. She pointed to the Burgess community, which has a formal organization that works to ensure its overlay district is enforced and other development concerns are heard.
Al Jordan, the president of the board of the Greater Burgess Community Association, said rezonings and developments don’t always work out in his group’s favor, but the fact the group is able to interface with developers and county leaders helps tremendously. Zoning overlays, too, aren’t perfect but provide a powerful tool that residents in the area can use.
“Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose (but the) councilmen hear our point of view,” Jordan said. “(Overlays) are not foolproof but they’re better, they have some vision long term. It’s not just catch as catch can on each individual case. But, hey, there’s no perfect way to do it.”
It’s not yet clear, though, if the overlay zoning that Highway 90 residents are pushing for will ultimately come to fruition. David Jordan, the county’s planning director, said Thursday the area might be too developed already, and that such a planning tool might not work as well for a residential area as it does for commercial areas. Still, he said, planning staff and planning commission members are well aware of the issues caused by the types of rezonings and developments along Highway 90, and that there could be an appetite for change.
And to that end, he and other county leaders are planning to participate in a community meeting on Highway 90 growth next Thursday at the Tilly Swamp Baptist Church.
Baker said she’s planning to continue organizing her neighbors, and is looking forward to the community meeting as a venue where even more progress can be made to better determine what the Highway 90 corridor looks like now and into the future.
“We’re finally making some baby steps in the right direction,” she said Thursday. “I feel like we had a huge victory today.”
This story was originally published July 12, 2021 at 5:13 PM with the headline "‘Starting to make some headway’: How some in Horry are fighting back against development."
