Horry Council votes to pause rural building, more restrictions coming soon

Horry County Council members on Tuesday voted to put in place a resolution that would discourage some building along the once-rural Highway 90 outside of Conway.

And even stricter building rules could be coming soon.

Under the resolution that the county council passed Tuesday, council members will be discouraged from voting to approve new land rezonings along S.C. 90 between the roads beginning at Highway 501 Business and ending at the road’s intersection with Highway 22. The rezoning pause extends for 1.5 miles on either side of Highway 90. Land rezonings are commonly pursued by home builders and other developers so that they can build more dense projects, such as three or four homes per acre, which may not be allowed under a piece of land’s current zoning.

But the resolution is not legally binding, and does not prevent council members from voting for specific rezoning projects, and won’t put any sort of ban on developers pursing rezoning projects in the area. While some residents have called for a moratorium on high-density rezonings in recent months, county council members and other county officials have been careful to not call the resolution they passed Tuesday a moratorium.

Rather, explained County Council Chairman Johnny Gardner, “It’s a resolution that expresses our will as a council that we don’t want to approve any rezonings right now unless it’s a good project.”

Gardner explained that a “good project” could be one that is not high-density, doesn’t have the potential to flood and has proper infrastructure nearby. But, he said, the council planned to move forward with a plan to pause rezonings until the county could find money and draft plans to improve Highway 90 and provide other needed public safety infrastructure, like a full-time fire station. Currently, the area has an unmanned volunteer fire station. It’s not yet clear how long those projects will take, or at what point council may lift the rezoning pause.

The resolution to pause Highway 90 rezonings passed 10-1 on Tuesday with Council member Bill Howard voting no because he felt he could vote for or against rezonings without a resolution. Council member Dennis DiSabato was absent from the meeting.

When it was first built, Highway 90 served as a farm-to-market road and today connects Conway to North Myrtle Beach. The thoroughfare has attracted numerous new subdivisions and the building continues today, which some residents say has made traffic accidents more frequent and flooding worse. In addition, residents point to statistics that the road reaches its capacity for vehicles daily, and that the traffic along the road makes it more difficult for emergency responders to reach them.

And several low-lying areas of the road flood during major storms, causing residents to become stranded. County Council members say the county needs to raise and widen parts of the road to increase its capacity and keep residents safe.

Gardner, as well as other members of council, also confirmed on Tuesday that the council is pursuing changes to the county zoning code that could further slow the rapid building that’s occurring along once-rural routes like Highway 90. By Sept. 14, County Planning Director David Jordan said, council members should be able to review plans to remove multi-family housing from the commercial-forest-agriculture (CFA) zoning category, which blankets large areas in Western Horry County.

That change is necessary, Gardner and others have said, because it allows developers to pursue high-density housing projects without any approval from the county Planning Commission or from County Council. Currently, if a developer seeks to rezone a piece of land to a higher-density residential category and that request is denied, the developer can still build a high-density project without county council approval.

A significant amount of land in Horry County is zoned as CFA because residents in the late 1990s and early 2000s opposed county-wide zoning. In response to the opposition, county leaders at the time developed CFA as a sort of catch-all zoning category that would allow for nearly any land use, including churches, businesses, apartment buildings and farms. Developers can build two homes per acre, as well as duplexes and apartment buildings under CFA.

So, Gardner said, the council is looking to remove the high-density land uses from CFA to prevent builders from pursuing those projects if county council votes down a rezoning request.

“...With the current CFA zoning, if someone doesn’t get the rezoning they want they fall back under that and they can do multi-family and other issues that the community just doesn’t want,” Gardner said.

Jordan said county planners would bring specific legal language to council members to do that at the next Infrastructure and Regulation meeting on Sept. 14.

Gardner added that it’s possible the council could extend the rezoning pause from Highway 90’s intersection with 22 Northward, and that such an extension was likely.

“That is absolutely a discussion we’re having,” he said. “If we’re going to do the resolution to reflect the will of council and we want smart development I think that’s the very next step and it will probably come quicker rather than later.”

It’s not clear how long the rezoning pause will remain in place.

On Tuesday, Madison Cooper, the vice president of governmental affairs for the Coastal Carolina Association of Realtors, told council members that her group would like the council to add an ending date for the rezoning pause.

“Landowners will have their hands tied” if they aren’t able to rezone their land and don’t know when the pause will be lifted, Cooper argued.

Council members did not make any amendments to the resolution Tuesday. Council members including Johnny Vaught and Danny Hardee have expressed a willingness to keep the pause in place until the county has funding and plans to improve Highway 90.

Council members are pursing the pause on rezonings following pressure from residents who have organized against the rapid development in the area in recent months. And while some residents acknowledge that the resolution is a way for the county to begin addressing their concerns, more could be done.

As residents have organized, Vaught, Hardee and other council members have expressed concern that too harsh of restrictions on building could mean they take away the rights of landowners, something they want to avoid. Howard said he voted against it in part because he believes the county needs the tax revenue from the new homes that could be built.

On Tuesday, Vaught, Hardee and other council members supported the ordinance.

“We’re not taking anybody’s rights away,” Hardee added.

Gardner said the goal of the resolution was “smart building.”

“It’s a resolution that we want to try to do some good, smart building, I’ve been saying it since I got elected,” he said. “It’s hard to do that but that’s our big goal right now.”

This story was originally published August 18, 2021 at 12:15 PM with the headline "Horry Council votes to pause rural building, more restrictions coming soon."