MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. (WBTW)-The Myrtle Beach planning director said the master plan for market common has been tweaked more than 100 times and now it could change another time.
One of the latest suggestions includes doing away with additional parking which was once in the master plan.
With an ever-changing plan, people who live in the area and own businesses, don’t know what to expect next.
Those who live here say residential parking is hard to come by already.
Those who depend on customers here say they lose out sometimes on customers and income because of the lack of spaces.
“It gets tight. When there is an event in Valor park or if there is an event across the road at the large park, it doesn’t take long for parking to fill up really fast. People end up parking in all the lawns, out back, parking garages get full and it gets pretty challenging and there’s a lot of need for more parking and I think if they develop a lot of the places and take away some of that parking, we’re not really sure,” said Michael Weeden, co-owner of the Roasted Bean.
Market common has been around for about eight years but even after all that time, the development is not close to being finished.
Landowners have asked the city to allow them to replace ten live work units and 88 townhomes to 50 single family homes.
This plan would mean fewer retail stores and a lot more houses than current business owners anticipated.
In a place that was supposed to be a good mix of houses and businesses, business owners say they feel like their stores are in a neighborhood and not in an entertainment district.
Business owners were hopeful more stores would create more people interested in market common, but now, there may not be many more stores.
“I think the difference would be from the shops to the houses, the houses would certainly draw in some new regular customers that will probably show up once or twice a week basis but I think if there were more shops, I think they’d be able to draw in more tourist business, more, other locals that come in and just hangout longer and want to walk up and down the street and check out all the shops that are here and have them hang out longer to spend a little more money,” Weeden added.
Council will vote on housing changes and parking changes at 2 Tuesday afternoon.
Count on News13 for updates.