"New Airport Next Step for Myrtle Beach, South Carolina"

Monday, May 11, 2004

Editorial
New Airport Next Step
Alliance members right to be scout for sites
The Myrtle Beach (SC) Sun News


The hatchet-burying ceremony conducted last week by Myrtle Beach City
Council and Horry County Council settled the question of future
air-service expansion only for the near term. For the next decade or
two, the Myrtle Beach International Airport, from a to-be-constructed
14-gate terminal west of the runway, will handle new demand for flights
to and from the Grand Strand.

But local and regional leaders can't stop their thinking about future
air service at the Myrtle Beach airport. That's why it's good that a
regional interest group that includes Horry County, the North Eastern
Strategic Alliance, is already scouting the Pee Dee for regional airport
sites, with a focus on Marion County. Alliance leaders, including S.C.
Rep. Alan Clemmons, R-Myrtle Beach, and S.C. Sen Yancey McGill,
D-Kingstree (who represents part of Horry County), rightly see
Interstate 73 as the new airport's logical gateway.

Whichever path the S.C. Department of Transportation ultimately picks
for I-73 will go through Marion County. That county also marks the
midpoint between Myrtle Beach and Florence - each of which has an
airport with limited long-term growth potential.

Moreover, a site large enough to house such an airport - 5,000 to 6,000
acres would be ideal - probably wouldn't work for Horry County, where
land values are galloping upward. Land in Marion County is comparatively
inexpensive.

The first step toward a regional airport is a study - to which Myrtle
Beach and Horry County, as part of their airport settlement, have
already agreed to devote $100,000 each. The other nine North Eastern
Strategic Alliance counties and the state are expected to come up with
the remaining $600,000 to defray the expected cost of the study.

Why begin this quest now? Because all of us need to "regionalize" our
thinking about the economic future. The Grand Strand market reaches
beyond the political boundaries of Georgetown and Horry counties
already, and it will expand even more with the opening of I-73.
Together, the counties of the Pee Dee boast more than 300,000 workers -
many of them underemployed.

The region has enormous potential, and a regional airport is a necessary
part of exploiting it. The North Eastern Strategic Alliance's forward
thinkers are smart to be working on it now.


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