Surfside Beach neighbors want to stifle apartment development of a former water park
Wild Water and Wheels enjoyed three successful decades a leading Horry County’s attraction, but the thrills are long gone for dozens of the park’s neighbors.
A litany of Surfside Beach residents pleaded for more than two hours on Dec. 6 for planning commissioners to recommend denial of a rezoning application allowing the shuttered park to become a mixed-use venture with more than 300 homes.
They got what they wanted.
“If you live in Horry County right now, you’ve probably gone from a 500-year to a 100-year floodplain. Why? Development,” commission chairman Sammy Truett said. “Infrastructure pressures, compatible uses. These are things we have been talking about for a while.”
His comments came after more than 30 people spoke out against the proposal that was the most heavily attended in the town’s history.
The 16-acre site off U.S. Highway 17 is operated by former county council member Mark Lazarus through his Lazarus Entertainment Group brand. Wild Water and Wheels opened in 1990.
More than 150 people unable to get inside crowded the town’s Civic Center parking lot and listened as the proceedings were streamed from a golf cart.
“This is God’s country, and you’ve done a good job managing it until now, but this is unacceptable,” resident Michael Fatzick said. “You’re building a brand new pier, and you want to put slum city in here?”
Huge crowds are expected again on Jan. 10 when the Town Council takes a first reading on the proposed rezone.
“There’s nobody that’s going to buy it as a water park,” Lazarus said at the Dec. 6 meeting, responding to a question about alternative uses for the land should the mixed use development be denied.
David Schwerd, a former county planning director who now runs real estate company Diamond Shores, is lead engineer on the project.
He said Dec. 6 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 be higher end models with rents between $1,600 and $2,220. A commercial aspect of the project would clear up to 40,000 square feet.
A proposed timeline has construction starting in the winter of 2023.
Schwerd said the roughly $40 million investment would benefit local businesses by providing year-round activity while boosting revenues to the town through building permits, car registration fees and other profits.
“In terms of commercial, I think you’re going to see a lot of benefit to our local establishments in the off season you’re not seeing now,” he said.
Planning commissioners were adamant that such a large cluster of new housing would disrupt Surfside Beach’s quality of life. If all 310 units were occupied by families of four, it would swell the town’s population of 4,253 by nearly a third.
“I can’t support any part of this proposal for even one residential unit over there,” commissioner Mary Ellen Abrams said.
