Carolina Forest, Market Common among high-profile candidates for more housing. A look at plans

Over the past six months, multiple plans have come forward seeking to expand Horry County’s housing market — showcasing not only how in demand Grand Strand real estate demands, but also how complicated it can be for local officials to decide if they’re good fits for their respective communities.

Here’s a look at some of the most high-profile pitches that have come forward since late last year.

Market Common avoids more homes — but what comes next?

Myrtle Beach’s city council on March 28 rebuffed a plan to put 203 homes on the last large undeveloped parcel within Market Common — to the delight of nearby residents who pushed hard for its failure.

The MarketWalk concept would have taken shape at the intersection of Farrow Parkway and Phillis Boulevard, with rental units starting at $2,300 a month.

Mayor Brenda Bethune and other council members have long identified an expansion of the city’s housing stock as a top priority, but sided with MarketWalk opponents who said the density would have created traffic jams and affected nearby wetlands.

Although developers said MarketWalk would have been less impact than a hotel initially planned for the parcel, city officials couldn’t justify putting that many rental units in the heart of Market Common’s upscale retail area.

“I don’t want our area to turn into another Horry County,” council member Philip Render said at the March 28 council meeting. “The density is just too great and to that end, I’m just not going to be able to support this.”

River Oaks Golf Course avoids green side congestion

In late 2022, Diamond Shores LLC pulled a request to site more than 550 homes on 171.7 acres of golf course land following backlash from residents and a vote of no confidence in plan by Horry County Council member Dennis DiSabato.

The rejection came ever after developers offered to create a new public park and widen River Oaks Drive to include deceleration and turn lanes.

The Carolina Forest Civic Association also opposed a potential River Oaks rezone.

Former Surfside Beach water park owner makes a splash with housing proposal

Diamond Shores was the center of another contentious housing plan earlier this year, when its concept of turning the former Wild Water and Wheels park in Surfside Beach into 300 apartments fell apart.

Rezoned in 2019 to allow for residential and commercial use, the 910 Business Highway 17 S attraction was seen by developers as the perfect spot for 300 homes and a 40,000-square-foot commercial pad.

Neighbors and the town’s planning commission disagreed, leading Diamond Shores to pull its application before council members could vote on it.

Average daily traffic from the project would have brought 26,700 more trips a year to the area, according to its application.

David Schwerd, a former county planning director who now runs Diamond Shores, said concessions were made from original plans filed with Surfside Beach in October, including scaling back the number of proposed multi-family apartments from 335 to 310.

The units would have been higher-end models with rents between $1,600 and $2,220.

The Horry County Council could add more cars onto Legends Drive

County leaders in January pushed off a decision to rezone 20 acres at the top of Legends Drive from highway commercial to one that would allow for a mixed-use development expected to include hundreds of apartments and a “community center.”

Located eight miles north of Myrtle Beach, the intersection at U.S. 501 and Legends Drive is heavily traveled with local restaurants including the Grumpy Monk, Walk-Ons and Olive Garden nearby.

Tanger Outlets is across the highway and at the end of the private road is an exclusive five golf course resort that pulls in almost 200,000 players a year.

Between the property’s $9 million market value and an average annual daily traffic count of nearly 51,000, the question isn’t whether the development will find it but when and what kind.

“Until we can come to a solution that people on all sides of the aisle accepts and everybody’s happy, then we go nowhere,” county council member Michael Masciarelli, whose district includes the Legends Drive area, said.

In June 2018, voters rejected creating a special tax district that would have paid for improvements along Legends Drive. At the time, it would have meant $214 more annually on a $200,000 home.

Six-figure homes are headed to Sayebrook

Imagined as one of the Grand Strand’s largest planned communities with 1,700 residential units at full build-out, contractors Pulte Homes, Saussy Burbank and Toll Brothers said in December it was putting up 151 homes as part of Sayebrook’s residential component.

The homes will join a rapidly growing commercial arm of the Sayebrook venture that includes major retailers like Kohl’s, Lowe’s, Target and Walmart along the highway corridors.

Hundreds more mobile homes could be coming to Horry County

The developers behind one of South Carolina’s best known mobile home parks are looking to expand their Horry County footprint with a second site along U.S. Highway 501.

Sun Communities — which manages Carolina Pines RV Resort — is hoping to build 348 more units near Aynor.

Sun’s “biggest scope of business is manufactured homes, and they do a really good job at it,” Mike Wooten, a principal at DDC Engineers, told the Horry County Planning Commission Jan. 5. “The architecture is such that now they have the ability to do the same design standards as a single-family home, and they’re really good properties.”

The commission unanimously recommended the county council rezone almost 9 1/2 acres abutting U.S. 501 from highway commercial to mobile home park — the same designation for 68 acres that surround it.

A separate vote will be need to approve building and design plans for the homes.