The front gate welcomes visitors to the base at
Farrow Parkway and Kings Highway.
By David Wren - Sun News
MYRTLE BEACH — The federal government’s report had an ominous sounding name – “Socioeconomic Impact Analysis Study.”
Its
conclusions appeared to be just as ominous: the loss of nearly 5,100
jobs; as many as 1,500 homes dumped on the resale market; a 15 percent
drop in students attending local schools; unemployment rates topping 20
percent; and an economic loss topping $91 million from payrolls, taxes
and other revenues as soon as the Myrtle Beach Air Force Base shut down
its operations.
Just as foreboding to many Myrtle Beach area residents was the sense of losing a longtime friend.
“You
could never find a better neighbor than the Air Force, it was a great
community,” said John Maxwell, a former Myrtle Beach city councilman who
helped lead efforts to redevelop the base after its March 31, 1993
closure. Now, 20 years later, the 3,937-acre former base has been
transformed into a model for how closed military facilities can be
revitalized to serve their communities.
Its mix of
higher-education facilities, ball fields and parks, more than 1,200
homes with more on the way, a Red Cross headquarters and Veterans
Affairs clinic, new general aviation and commercial airport terminals, a
new technology and aerospace business park and a centerpiece commercial
district called The Market Common, with its upscale shops and
restaurants, has exceeded nearly everyone’s initial vision for what the
base could become. “Redevelopment of the base with The Market
Common has been a great success,” said Cathy Jerrard, the Air Force’s
program manager for the former Myrtle Beach base. "Compared to other
[closed] bases, they are way ahead of the curve. What they’ve done there
is impressive.” Buddy Styers, a Myrtle Beach native and retired
Air Force colonel, has been at the helm of the Myrtle Beach Air Base
Redevelopment Authority – the group in charge of creating new jobs and
development at the base – since August 1995. With all of the base
property transferred from the military, Styers no longer draws a
fulltime paycheck but still shows up at the office at least once a week
to oversee the authority’s greatly reduced workload.
Styers spends
much of his time these days helping Myrtle Beach International Airport
with its economic development efforts, funneling about $200,000 annually
in state grant money from the authority to the airport. The grant
program that’s funding that development has been extended to 2017. “Why
should the authority go away when we can still help and be a benefit to
the community?” Styers said, adding that the authority’s money will be
used as matching funds for a ramp and taxiway at the airport’s
International Technology and Aerospace Park, or ITAP.
Horry County
Councilman Paul Prince, who was on the council when the base closed,
said he’s “very pleased with the way things have turned out.” “We might not have felt this way at the time, but the base closing has been a blessing in disguise,” he said. “It
amazes me sometimes that it’s been so successful,” Maxwell said. “I
tell people that that’s going to be the center of Myrtle Beach in a few
years.” Shortly after taking over as the authority’s executive
director, Styers said he spoke to a community group eager to hear his
vision for the base’s future.
“Being retired Air Force, I hope no
one ever forgets the base was here, but I told them that someday we will
make something that will be so integral and important to the community
that people may have a tendency to forget the Air Force was here,”
Styers said, admitting his prediction at that time was greeted with some
disbelief. Today, with most of the beige and brown military
buildings torn down or in reuse, many visitors and newcomers to Myrtle
Beach may not realize the base once existed. But the city has kept the
base history alive with a military museum at its Crabtree Gymnasium, a
pair of parks – Valor Memorial Garden and Warbird Park, with its Wall of
Service featuring the names of those who lived and worked at the base –
and more than 150 historical markers along parks, bike paths and
walkways on the base, detailing the contributions of those who served at
the base. The Myrtle Beach Air Force Base was on the 1991 list of
military facilities scheduled for closure by the Base Closure and
Realignment Commission, the federal agency that began disposing of
unneeded Department of Defense facilities two years earlier. The Myrtle
Beach base started winding down its operations in late 1991 and closed
for good in 1993.
While the military’s economic projections for
life after the base seemed dire, some local officials were concerned
that the impact was going to be much worse.
“Everybody believes
we’ll rebound from this, but how long will it take?” Ashby Ward, the
former president of the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce, said at
the time. “There’s going to be immediate hardship on real estate and
construction.” Judy Fry, the former president of the Greater Horry
County Board of Realtors, warned the base closing would bring the
area’s real estate market “close to devastation.” Jack Walker, the
city’s planning director and the first to envision an urban village at
the base, remembers the city was “real concerned.” “Not only were
we going to lose the on-base jobs, but the other off-base families that
were associated with the military – civilian jobs, support jobs,” Walker
said. “We knew it was going to be a real shock for us to absorb that
impact.”
But even as the base was closing, other economic forces
were taking shape to put the Myrtle Beach area at the forefront of
national tourism destinations. Myrtle Beach was named a “metropolitan
statistical area” in 1993, a Census Bureau designation that attracts the
attention of chain restaurants and retailers looking to move to
up-and-coming cities that might not otherwise appear on their radar.
That
same year, Myrtle Beach land owner Burroughs & Chapin Co. Inc.
hired its first outsider – Doug Wendel, a former public administrator –
to run the family-owned company. Wendel’s arrival ushered in an
aggressive era of tourism and real estate related development for
B&C. Among Wendel’s first announcements was the Broadway at the
Beach shopping and entertainment center, with its “New Center of Fun”
slogan and pyramid-shaped Hard Rock Café and Ripley’s Aquarium as major
draws.
Then, during the spring of 1995, a front-page story in The
Wall Street Journal introduced Myrtle Beach and its attractions –
including live-music theaters such as The Carolina Opry – to millions of
readers nationwide, providing the spark for many of them to make their
first visit to the Grand Strand.
By that time, Ward – who died in
2003 – had changed his mind about economic impact of the base closure.
Ward said at the time that The Wall Street Journal article gave Myrtle
Beach instant credibility. “It shows we’re not a moss-gathering rock,” he said. A
steady influx of new businesses, jobs, visitors and retirees quickly
offset the economic impact of the departing military. A few months after
The Wall Street Journal discovered Myrtle Beach, American Demographics
magazine dubbed the Myrtle Beach MSA the nation’s second-fastest growing
area for jobs and people. As 1995 drew to a close, the air base
authority and others had replaced most of the 800 civilian jobs that had
been lost when the Air Force moved out of town. Among the biggest
economic development announcements was electronic manufacturer AVX
Corp.’s decision to build a $6 million, 58,800-square-foot research and
development facility on former base property.
While the rest of
Myrtle Beach was in the midst of a $1 billion building boom in the
mid-1990s, redevelopment of the base proper moved at a slower pace. The
authority, which was created by the governor’s executive order in 1994,
knew it wanted to create an urban village, but the property’s roads,
utilities and other infrastructure needed major upgrades and the
authority didn’t have enough money to foot the bill. In addition, the
authority was fielding requests from numerous groups – homeless
advocates looking for shelters, the YMCA seeking recreational
facilities, a preacher looking to build a private school, among others –
who saw the opportunity for free or low-cost land.
The military
had created a public benefit conveyance program in which local officials
could transfer base land for free or at a reduced cost if the property
was going to a group that served an important need for the community.
The authority was the final say for land transfers at the Myrtle Beach
base, and some groups exerted tremendous political pressure in an
attempt to get their way. “Those were probably some of the most
difficult times for the authority,” Styers said. “We already had a
development plan for the base, though, and the authority members stood
their ground. They said, ‘This is our plan and we’re not going to change
it’. They weren’t swayed by political actions. They made their
decisions based on the economic and development needs of the community.” The
authority eventually awarded public benefit conveyances to
Horry-Georgetown Technical College for its Myrtle Beach campus, the city
for its recreational needs, the Red Cross for an administrative
building and property for a private, Christian school. The city also won
the base’s Whispering Pines golf course for free – the area’s only
municipal course – after negotiating with the Air Force.
The
authority unsuccessfully applied for a free transfer of the base land
under an economic development conveyance program that provided closed
military property at no cost to communities struggling to rebound from
economic hardships caused by base closures. The Air Force wasn’t buying the authority’s argument that it qualified for free land. “When
you walk into the Pentagon and ask for special economic concessions for
Myrtle Beach, you’re not met with a straight face,” Pat McCullough, who
was the Southern region manager for the Air Base Conversion Agency,
said in March 1995. “People all over the country think of Myrtle Beach
as very prosperous. In Washington, it’s seen as a place that can stand
on its own.” Three years after the military left, the authority was still struggling to find money for redevelopment. “There
are a lot of specific hopes for breaking things loose on the base, more
now than there’s ever been,” Harold Stowe, the authority’s chairman,
said in March 1996. “But we aren’t going to support our operations
beyond this year unless we generate some revenue sources pretty
quickly.”
The money was slow to come, but when it finally arrived, it was a flood. In
1998, the state legislature earmarked all of the money Horry County
businesses paid for Sunday liquor, beer and wine sale permits – about
$1.8 million a year – to go to the authority for its operating costs.
The authority continued to receive that annual amount for five years. The
authority agreed to buy the 280-acre, 770-unit base housing complex
from the Air Force for $5.9 million and negotiated with a local
developer who agreed to fund the authority’s down payment to the
military and lease the housing for $360,000 a year. Four years later,
that developer bought the housing complex for $16.6 million. “We
literally had no money in that deal,” Styers said, adding that the
developer picked up all the costs of renovating the housing, sewer lines
and roads in the community. The authority netted $10.7 million on the
sale. Later, the state legislature set aside 5 percent of the
state income taxes paid by federal employees at S.C. military bases for
redevelopment efforts at closed facilities, including Myrtle Beach. And
the authority got another $6 million from the sale of property called
the Ross tract, where a theme park initially was planned and the Withers
Preserve housing development now is being built.
All of the
authority’s newfound wealth went toward infrastructure costs and
improving community resources. For example, Styers estimates the
authority has given $10 million to Horry-Georgetown Technical College
for its base campus and another $6 million was spent helping the city
upgrade Crabtree gymnasium and build new ball fields for its recreation
programs. “We’ve put every dime back into public use,” Styers said. The authority’s biggest coup occurred after Congress changed the rules on how economic development conveyances could occur. The
authority in 1997 negotiated with the Air Force to buy 420 acres of
base property – including land where The Market Common was built – for
nearly $9 million, with interest-only payments for the first three
years. As the authority’s initial interest payment was coming due,
Styers said he was summoned to a meeting with Air Force officials in
Washington, D.C. “When I got there, they told me that Congress had
changed the law and if I could justify why I couldn’t make that payment
[for the base property] they would forgive it,” Styers said. “Needless
to say, on the flight back home I wrote my justification letter, typed
it up the next day and we got that payment forgiven.”
The economic development conveyance the authority had been denied in 1995 was now approved.
Styers
said the Air Force “did a terrific job cooperating with us, bending
over backward numerous times to make it possible for us to do what we
needed.” Maxwell credits the Air Force for “allowing us to reap the rewards of land sales on the base to redevelop the land.” “Originally,
all of the money that was generated from land sales was supposed to go
back to the Air Force,” Maxwell said. “They changed that rule to the
benefit of the communities and allowed the communities as they sold the
land to put the money back into redevelopment. That made Buddy’s group a
very wealthy group.”
With the public benefit conveyances out of
the way and a steady revenue stream in place, the authority started
leasing its land to businesses, such as Toffino’s bakery, and pouring
money into infrastructure. The authority demolished 93 obsolete military
buildings – including the old barracks, where Grand Lake now exists –
and embarked on a $30 million improvement to the base’s roads, water and
sewer lines and stormwater drainage.
However, the last piece of
the development puzzle – a New Urbanism-type village with shops and
restaurants on the first floor and residences above them – still existed
only in the stack of planning documents and feasibility studies in
Styers’ office. “There was a total lack of capacity in the local
development community to understand what New Urbanism and traditional
neighborhoods were all about because most of our developers were either
hotel developers, shopping center developers or housing developers,”
said Walker, who helped create the original urban village plan approved
by the city in 1993, which eventually morphed into The Market Common
project. “Developers didn’t understand retail on the first floor,
housing above, mixing of uses, compact development and how when you
create open space it creates quality of life,” Walker said. “Neither did
the banks.”
The authority, beginning in 1999, spent three years
trying to market the urban village concept to developers but got
nowhere. Even some authority members were skeptical.
“Every time I
mentioned urban village, they’d say ‘What in the devil is an urban
village’?” Styers said. “It was hard not to get discouraged.” Walker
said he was impressed that the authority stuck with the urban village
plan even though some community leaders said it would never work. “The
authority protected the plan,” Walker said. “Some decisions were tough
and we had to do our homework to make it clear that if they would just
simply take our advice on this, it would eventually work out.” Styers hired an Atlanta real estate broker to find a developer, but not one single prospect emerged in a year’s time. Frustrated
with the lack of progress, Styers made one last attempt to find an
urban village developer by asking local real estate brokers if they knew
of anyone who might be interested. One of those brokers – Gary Roberts,
owner of Coldwell Banker Chicora Real Estate – was friends with a real
estate broker near Washington, D.C., named Tom Shuler, who had worked on
major development projects with public companies. Roberts got in touch
with his friend, who recommended New York-based Leucadia National Corp.
and Chicago-based McCaffery Interests as possible developers for the
Myrtle Beach site.
Leucadia is a deep-pocketed holding company
with subsidiaries ranging from telecommunications and mining to banking
and health care while McCaffery specializes in the redevelopment of
under-performing real estate, with several urban village projects in its
portfolio. Shuler brought representatives of both companies to
Myrtle Beach and Roberts sold them on the local market and the potential
of the base property. Leucadia and McCaffery signed a contract to
develop The Market Common within two weeks of touring the site, Roberts
said. The deal was announced to the public in September 2004. “It
took a team of people to make this happen, and I’m just proud to have
been a part of it,” Roberts said. “I think it’s one of the best things
to have happened in Myrtle Beach.”
The economic key to The Market
Common project was the city’s willingness to issue nearly $41 million in
bonds to help pay for public infrastructure at the base, including
roads, parks, water lines and other components needed to spur
development.
The city used a law passed by the state legislature in the
1990s that designated the entire base as a tax increment financing
district. That allowed the city to use property taxes generated by new
development at the base to pay off the bonds. “Dan McCaffery
[president of McCaffery Interests] told me repeatedly that if the
infrastructure wasn’t in place, he wouldn’t have been interested,”
Styers said, adding that McCaffery Interests brought a new level of
nationally known retail and restaurant tenants, such as P.F. Chang’s
China Bistro, Williams-Sonoma and Gordon Biersch Brewery Restaurant. More
than three years after the initial announcement, the $160 million The
Market Common project opened in April 2008 with nearly 400,000 square
feet of retail and office space and 195 residential units, adding to the
mix of housing available at other areas throughout the base.
“I’ve
talked to a lot of the families that have moved out there and they just
love it, and they don’t even have the whole package yet,” Walker said.
“There are still a lot of little things that we want to be able to pull
together that will make it a complete network of neighborhoods that work
seamlessly as one.”
Among the projects still under construction
is the International Technology & Aerospace Park, a business park
located adjacent to The Market Common and the airport. The Myrtle Beach
Regional Economic Development Corp. is charged with luring technology
and aviation-related industries paying good wages to the park. “Probably
the thing that’s the most hard to achieve, but we’re slowly getting
there, is the technology campus of ITAP because people still think of us
as just a beach destination resort,” Walker said. “I think we’ll get
there with some aggressive marketing on the part of the airport and the
county, but that’s still somewhat of a missing piece.” Walker said
the city also eventually wants to extend Grand Park toward the Emory
Road area to better serve the neighborhoods that are being developed at
the base. There also are long-range plans to extend Fred Nash Boulevard
to connect the base with Harrelson Boulevard, which stretches between
U.S. 17 Business and U.S. 17 Bypass.
“That’s going to help ITAP
because people are going to be able to fly in at the airport and zip
right over to there without having to get on the bypass or Kings
Highway,” he said. Included among the planning documents in
Walker’s office at City Hall is a series of booklets dating back 20
years with different variations of an urban village project for the
former base. The initial concept was simple – a small group of two-story
buildings with retail on the ground floor and homes on the second
floor. As the plan evolved, the bar was set higher and higher. The end
result is like nothing Walker could have imagined when he first
presented the concept to the City Council in the weeks before the base
closed.
“I’d say that in all aspects, this exceeds everything I
thought was possible,” Walker said. “When we first started, we didn’t
have a crystal clear understanding of what we wanted the neighborhoods
to look like. As we got more into it, the view of what could happen
became clearer. Even so, we never envisioned an urban village with the
quality we have out there now. We’ve done as good a job of
redevelopment, if not better, than anybody I’ve ever seen.”
