Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

September 1st, 2026, Murr Beach Planning Commission meeting. We will begin this meeting with roll call. Phil. Here. Danielle.

Here.

Sharon.

Here.

Joe. Here. And Paul. Here. We've got Lawrence and... Betty. Betty and Absinthe. Alright, moving on to the approval of the minutes from August 18th. Any questions or concerns there? I'll make a motion. Okay. A motion by Paul, second by Danielle. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion carries. All right. Moving on, before we start matters of business, this is a public hearing today. If you plan on addressing the board, please come up to the podium and state your name for the submission. All right. Text 2606, sidewalk ordinance.

The murder features on encode article 17 design and performance standards to remove language regarding sidewalk installation and replace it with new regulation pertaining to sidewalk development in the maintenance fund. Here the sidewalk ordinance changes. We'll be removing the sidewalk requirement in the individual sections of 1705 mixed use and 1708 amusement to consolidate requirements in one section. We would update section 1702 design standards for all zoning districts to include required sidewalk installation in all commercial zoning districts excluded single-family residential. This is the creation of its sidewalk assessment feed that may be used instead of installing its sidewalk when approved by the zoning administrator and acknowledged by the public works director or assignment. Here we have the findings of the facts and this is a public hearing. If you have any questions, you can answer them.

I have a question. Yes. How does it work now if there's property that they're developing and there's already an existing sidewalk there and they're able to not destroy the sidewalk and put a new one back? Do they just not pay anything now?

No, you have to bring it up to code. So it depends on where you're at and how wide that road is.

But what if the sidewalk that's existing is up to code? They don't...

Most of the existing sidewalks are four feet. If you look at what the prior ordinance stated, or the active ordinance states, you're looking at a six foot wide sidewalk and or a 10 foot wide sidewalk. And it would just pertain to the property itself. And sometimes the sidewalk would then encumber onto the actual property and then we'd have to work through easements as well with that.

four foot sidewalk and somebody was building a home or a real venue or whatever And in this, they would have to extend the sidewalk to six foot?

Out of this, the ordinance in front of you, we're evaluating on an eight foot wide sidewalk based off the uses. And then from there, we would evaluate what the city's desire is to have in that place. We may not even want a sidewalk there, but we would forego those funds and then align it, whether it be with installation elsewhere where we've made a complete connection. and or repairs to existing area. So the fund itself is going to still stay with what we call the sidewalk layout. It gives us a little bit of flexibility and also allows us to control the sidewalk as making sure it stays on property.

Right now, the current ordinance in play is multiple times it's crossed over and also private property.

requiring easements and much more additional details than the scope of that original thought was in place. And so if there's not a sidewalk on that street, you're not putting a sidewalk in front of the property that's being developed, they'll just... Correct. But the goal is to have what we call a complete sidewalk. So where you hit a corner, you walk the whole way. I think it was kind of brought up at council today, like there's like 30 feet of missing sidewalk somewhere out there at Seagate. I mean, the goal is to complete the incomplete sections, finish, like, instead of you're just seeing a property that was redeveloped and then that sidewalk just pertains to that one property. And then you're back on the dirt. So the goal is to have uniformity.

So would the excess funds go towards, like, putting sidewalks in other places in the city?

Like, I'm filling those gaps? Yeah, if you get down to the back end of the ordinance, it would be reviewed by, like, head for a recommendation from the city manager, and then those funds would be allocated as needed, whether it be installation, repair, upgrade. Okay.

I think the thing is, we don't have one idea in mind. We had a lot of situations that were coming up in regard to sidewalks. This is one way where one answer gives us the option to address them all with this one answer. So it's not like we're driving this for one specific purpose. We're driving this for multiple reasons in regard to it. And we're trying to factor in some common sense. on some of this.

One thing you guys don't see is when we work, you guys don't see what's underground, and then we run into sometimes some underground issues. This whole ordinance itself gives us flexibility that the prior one did not.

I'm sure you addressed it last time, but for some reason I can't get it on my mind. Say that the property itself is going to require each side has four feet, which is a lot of places like that. When they go to develop, they're not at the current standards. So are they going to go to eight feet, or are they going to not require one at all?

No, the ordinance that before you would allow us to continue that floor. Okay, and I thought that was more to make sure. Yeah, that happens when like,

there's not existing ones to each side of it. You wouldn't go in and put a fee because it's just on.

This is an answer for me. This gives us many options for many situations. No, no two situations are the same. And so we've got an ordinance in place that allows us to answer any particular situation, but all out of the same ordinance.

Any other questions for staff? All right, I'll open it up to public hearing. If you'd like to address the board, please come up and state your name. Seeing nobody for public comment, I will close the public hearing and bring it back to commissioners. Motion to approve. Second. Motion by Joe, second by Paul. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed?

Moving on. The intent is to have multiple cuts. There is one existing large cut that there are negotiations currently underway to either relocate in order to provide multiple access points for both the fire station and the Coast RTA facility.

Okay. And then I guess a follow-up question. The easement that comes off of Mr. Joe White, would that just be for the buses or would that be for public and...

So the answer to your question is the reason the easement is there is because when the subdivision of these parcels took place, we created a parcel back here that did not have legal access to a public right-of-way. And the way that we achieved maintaining that access to public right-of-way for that parcel was to plat that easement. That easement follows the site plan that's currently prepared back through the fire station parcel and through the Coast RTA facility. While that is planned to be an access way, according to the fire stations site plans that I've seen, and through the Coast to RTA facility, it won't be the only way for the public to get in and out of.

I'm talking about the, I guess it's an easement, that goes out to. The one that goes out, I'm sorry. So, refresh my memory, what was your question? Will that be just for the buses to come in and out, or will that be public and-

and buses? So currently the site plan doesn't have us utilizing that to get out for reasons that involve the ponds that are there and the canal that it discharges into but Coast to RTA does want to and while we're showing like this is what the commission had asked last time as well is what would the recombination look like after the fact and the plan is because this parcel is already in the city of Myrtle Beach is to combine that with these parcels that are coming into the city if you approve it, and to create one single parcel. But the site plan does not currently show an access out that way. It was considered during the site planning, but because of the jobs and some other constraints, it wasn't an ideal way to get access into the site.

So basically, you're just working around and with an existing easement that's already in place at that location? Yes.

Was there any plan, which I was told there was, of the Greyhound bus station moving up there?

The last thing that I've heard, and I'm not with Coast RTA, so take this for the grain of salt, but the last I've heard is that they are still in discussions to relocate that. But since Greyhound is a separate entity from Coast, it's a business decision as opposed to something else. But I do believe that's still on the table. That is what I have been told.

Okay.

Because I know this right here just totally takes it off the block.

Well, actually, the only thing that's happening from what I understand is we're annexing parcels into the city of Myrtle Beach that are currently owned by Coast RTA in order to construct their facility and transfer property that's being annexed to the city so that the city can construct its fire station on city-owned property in the city.

could.

Yeah, just like you can't, there's no solution, but it's like, okay.

All right. Thank you.

Thank you. I have a question about the staff. So this is just for bringing them into the city. And I'm assuming, as far as the easement's concerned, that that will really be addressed when they start to develop the property. Correct. And that's when they'll get into that they have the proper easements to do the type of development they want to do. Is that the way I understand it works?

Yes, the easement coming off Mr. Joe White is already in existence. And the other easement is the one that they're proposing to get back to that back piece of property that's been cut off from the bigger parcel. So one is a new proposed easement and the other is an existing.

So these, I mean, based on your comments, these easements are sufficient size that they can develop whatever we are planning on these properties?

They are sufficient size to serve their purpose. I feel safe making that statement.

To be able to allow them to come to the city. Okay. And it's set the bottom out like this.

Okay. Okay. I will open the public hearing. If anybody from the public would like to address the commission, please come up and state your name. Seeing nobody from the public, I'll close the public hearing and bring it back to the commissioner. Communications from staff.

Yes. So we will be picking back up that cultural resource element. And I will like to have another meeting with that cultural resource element committee group. And then we'll do another push for public engagement. I just wanted to keep you guys updated on that, that if you're in that committee, you'll be having an email from me soon. Last time I think it was Danielle. Austin, you were there.

Am I missing someone?

Joe was there. Are you three still available for that committee?

Yeah. Okay.

Paul, I think you said you would...

I'm sorry.

Did you, would you like to be included as well? Yeah. Okay, perfect.

Can we have four?

I thought it was, you can't have five.

You just got to make sure that you're not putting everybody in the community that, you know, the drugs. Might have somebody not bought in here for the next one, but I just got off the previous one. The original committee was three. Or was the original committee four? The original committee was Danielle, Austin, and- I put all four of them in the email.

Okay. I think just one person wasn't available to come.

Four doesn't constitute four.

But also CAB is in there and CRC as well. So it's a three committee, or three commission committee for cultural resources.

You'll be getting your email with a total number of people on the committee.

Sounds good. All right.

And then for the Zoner rewrite in your package, we received some questions that came in. It's a lot of questions that they created. It's based on the drafts that you guys have so far. We created a presentation, breaking it down by section. And it depends on how you guys would like us to go through it. We can go through individual sections, the entire document. How would you guys like to process this?

Just explain to them what we've given them. We've basically given you some cheat sheets.

So in front of you, you will have the presentations that we currently have. The first page is the questions that were given, and then we have reference material based on the sections they reference. So as we go through the presentation, we can look at some of the questions that you guys are willing and would want to answer, and then we can look at some of the materials that they have given to us so far.

Are you wanting to do this today,

No, no, no, no. This is something to do on your own time. Flip through a couple of the slides, OK? These are some pretty tough questions. The next slide. Next slide. This is pretty tough questions to all of a sudden pull up into, OK? For me, it's what I deal with every day. So whenever I read it, it automatically pops into my familiarity range. For y'all, it doesn't do that. I understand that. So what we've done is we've given you the questions that they've got, and we've given you some sections of the code that apply directly without the drive-throughs. They're asking you questions about the drive-throughs, but there's a section of the code about drive-throughs, okay? Again, you've got each one of these sections on your own. If you don't understand something, refer back to the sections that you have. Sometimes you have to read what's before, the statement that you're reading to get the true understanding, and sometimes you have to read what's after it for that statement to get that true understanding. I'm not expecting you to come in here and y'all be A plus students on this, but I do expect you to have something to talk about out of it because these are some questions that make you think. One of the things that you can do is you can kind of go back and go through these questions and some of them that you can't, do they mean this or do they mean that? That's when you come back to us and let us know. That's when you reach out to us and send an email. That's when you reach out to us and make a phone call. Because I want you all to have an understanding of what we're doing moving forward. So we try to give you good examples. These are not simple questions. These are questions that make you think a little bit. If zoning rewrites were easy, everybody would be doing them a whole lot more often. So we do expect it to be a little bit complicated. We do expect it to kind of make you think a little bit deeper.

There's been a lot of discussion that y'all have as you're preparing these. And if you can somehow, without being too lengthy, but yet lengthy enough to get the context, some of these things, for example, the questions I'm asking, if you don't understand the context behind it and how you got to where you got to it and what the thinking is of what has been put there, it's hard to know what's the right comment to make in certain situations. So when you do get ready to do presentations, especially these are great questions and they are hard thinking questions because they're not just a one answer fits all type scenario. It just depends upon people's thinking, personalities, etc. So I don't know if I'm making sense to you, but, you know, I just like God.

There are no wrong comments. Right. I know. Okay, so I guess if you don't understand something and your comment shows that you don't understand it, that helps us.

Okay.

Okay, because then we know if they don't understand it, the next person's probably not going to understand it either. So, I mean, so you being as honest and truthful as you can with us on this, is what gives us the assistance that we need. The questions can be a little bit tricky, but if you go back and read the section of the ordinance that they're applying to, that assists greatly in the understanding of the question. It's like the questions on their own are hard. The questions in conjunction with the section of the code is what gives you a little bit of reason and a little bit of understanding. Again, I want to know how you truly feel about this stuff. If it's something you don't understand, then we need to understand why you don't understand it. That's the best way to help us is just to be honest and truthful whenever you're going through answering these questions or giving us your input back on this. That's what we want. We don't want you to give us what you think we want to hear. We want you to give us exactly what you're thinking when you read over that section.

An example I gave, and we don't have to get into it, would be like, what should be the height of an amusement park ride, and what is the setback for it, et cetera. The first question to ask is, what is the issue with the height, and what are we trying to reduce, and what are we trying to accomplish by saying, for example, should it even be next to a residential area, even though it's allowed right here, but you've got to have a different distance to understand that. But I'm trying to get the context behind, what is the height issue? If it's in a commercial area, if it's in a mutant zone area, what has been looked at that determines that the hike becomes an issue and why? It's hard to evaluate if it should be 60 feet, 80 feet, 30 feet.

I think if you've got to think about something to that deep, to do that much effort, and you really can't come up with a heads or tails as to why it should be anything different, that's one I'm fine with. Okay, you know, I think the biggest thing on that question, it was going to kind of be many proximity to neighborhoods. They can't ask you just part of the question, they got to ask you the whole question. Some parts of the whole question may not be of the greatest relevance in regard to it. Okay. I think an amusement ride next to a single family home is definitely a no go. Okay, but an amusement ride next to a 200 high hotel you're in a different zone of classification. Different standards apply. Like I said, all the questions, sometimes you have to ask a question just so you can say you can check that block. And that's what some of these are. I don't expect you to answer all of them, but the ones that really stand out to you are the ones to make your comments on.

Right now it does show it could be next to residential. So based on how formally you put it. But anyhow, okay, that helped a little bit. In here, it talked about all the definitions of manufacturing mobile homes and modular homes sufficient. I didn't see a definition for a modular home. I know what it is, but I didn't see one put in here.

There's not one in there, and that's an explanation that we're looking back to the M4 as well. One of the reasons a modular home really doesn't need to be defined is because a modular home is the equivalent of a stick-built home. Wherever you can build a stick-built home is where you can put a modular home. So there truly is no differentiation between a modular unit and a stick-built home. You know, a modular unit can't go into a mobile home park. So that's one of the things that we have noted ourselves as well.

Okay. Well, they're just asking that the definition provide enough clarity. And we said there was no definition for it, so it had no clarity.

And again, some of the questions that you have are some of the same questions we have. Okay. So there's some of the same ones that we're looking for answers to as well.

And you're helping me. That's why I'm asking to make sure I can grasp it as I'm going through it.

I will say, I'm not going to say that we agree nor do we disagree with everything that's on those pages.

Yeah, I understand that. This is preliminary stuff for us to use to start real discussions about. Yes, sir. I got you. That has a lot been done already, so...

Looking at the drive-thru slide... A lot of these questions seem more like CAB type questions instead of us.

It is, but the thing that I've learned in working with these consultants is the answer that you give means one thing to me, but the answer that you give may mean something completely different to them. It may put them on a completely different mindset, a completely different path to be going down. so like these aren't right wrong questions okay these are just questions to kind of say okay if these are questions that planning commission is going to have about these these are also questions probably general public is going to have about this so i mean that's one of the big things that's on there and you've also got to realize too that yeah cab is a part of zoning the cab section is in the zoning code so yeah you're going to get some of those questions in relation to, it seemed more like CAB type matters. Okay.

And did I get that right? I was reading through about where when you have queues for people that's propping off stuff, it's not supposed to block the highway, but you know we have that happen in all Long Ocean Boulevard. What's going to happen with that based upon these regulations?

Some things don't apply everywhere. There's a set of rules for the boulevard. I'm just saying sometimes the zoning code is biblical in that it giveth and it taketh away.

Everybody feel good about this?

Again, this isn't a pass fail. There's nothing along those lines.

This is just give me your comments. Are we going to come and comment together about it, or are we going to separately provide comments?

Anything that you can provide to us beforehand is much better for us. It gives us time to prepare. um to have better answers for you hopefully in regard to it um and the reason that we're not talking a whole lot about this right now is that that's the purpose of why we're doing this we don't want you to give you these questions and say this is what this question means this is how i need you to answer it we want you to read it and get what you get what you feel comes out of it and give your true answer okay i want us to be wrong

Communications from the commissioner. So we send them individually.

I have one.

Yeah.

What would be my next step with the 501 being postponed to get that moved for, my concern is the safety of the buses coming in there and all the traffic. Since there's no concur to move the bus station, How can we move ahead to make sure that something's going to happen? Because it's going to be a safety factor with all the traffic coming in right now.

Are we talking about Greyhound? Greyhound. The Greyhound station?

Yes.

I'll see what I can find out for you.

Okay, because to me, without more traffic going directly right there, it's deadlocking the neighborhood. Because there's not going to be any room for buses coming in there. And to me, that's more of a safety. And that's why I'm trying to push before the five, it does open up to get something resolved.

I think we might be able to get some answers.

So I apologize for being late. It took an hour to get here from Conway because of the bridge over to Waccamaw. My name's Brian Piasek. I'm the general manager, CEO of Coast RTA. Really appreciate the positive finding on our zoning. annexation request I think the question was answered about or was asked about what's going on with Greyhound first of all we're not dealing with Greyhound we're dealing with a company called Flixbus which is a German company they own Greyhound they are very interested in moving to our transit center which would be over on Grissom Parkway opening day of that transit take a month so we got a little ways before we can accommodate them but we are providing space at their requests on what they think they need in the program of the of the transit center and they are very interested in moving out of that location and co-locating with us so but it's it's a ways off so you still got but still got two years of dealing with the where they're at right now yeah this is more of a safety

Because there's not room right there for buses that could come now.

It's four buses a day. There's a route that goes from, actually it's three, a bus that goes on its way to Atlanta, to Columbia, through Columbia, that comes in once a day and leaves. And then there's a bus that runs between Virginia Beach and Charleston that stops in here in each direction, so twice a day. So it's not a lot of buses, and I'm not really familiar with how they

where they block everything.

Yeah, but they usually don't have a lot of waiting time there. They try to turn and burn, as they say in the industry. So, that was my two cents.

Thank you for sharing this. Yep. Yeah. The road that's in front of the,

a refurbisher redone downtown in this old chain company building which is Main Street. Is there a plan to eventually close that road when 5-1-1 goes straight through?

You know we're asking us a lot of questions that we as a department have not been in on the conversation.

Right in front of the theater? Partially yes. What we call the old main Must have turned into a walking corridor.

I understand that whole road is supposed to close off.

Well, the theater kind of makes that little bit of a curve, so part of that right away will still rain, but it's almost in front of the park we have. It's like the block place.

The theater, so part of it, yeah. All roads, some of these roads are all going away. Some of these roads are just becoming dead ends. Okay.

Does that answer your question?

I may have a site plan.

You know, have you heard any timetables? No.

It's just a concept still. I don't get timetables. Okay. Bring it back to commissioners for a motion. Motion by Joe. Second. Second by Danielle. All those in favor?