MYRTLE BEACH, SC (WBTW) – Myrtle Beach is seeing more business growth. The city approved almost two thousand new business licenses this past year, and expects that number to keep growing.
“Myrtle Beach apparently is a really good place to do business. We’re a little town that has 10,000 business licenses in a given year,” said city spokesperson Mark Kruea.
The city granted about 1,700 new business licenses this past fiscal year. That’s about 200 more than the number of new business licenses last year. “It’s across the board. Some of them will be contractors who are just here to do a job inside the city. Then there are restaurants, and retail shops, hotels,” Kruea added.
He said the increase in businesses is good for local residents since it makes Myrtle Beach a better place to live. “You’re not going to find another town of 30,000 people anywhere in the country that has the diversity of things to choose from. The number of restaurants, the number of shops, the malls.” Business growth also keeps costs for Myrtle Beach residents low, thanks to business license fees, which are a percentage of gross revenues. “The business license fee helps pay for the services we provide as a city, one of our major sources of revenue, but it also helps keep our property taxes low,” Kruea said.
Kruea says the city is trying to attract more major, national retailers, but hasn’t had much luck. “The problem is we’re a small town, and that doesn’t really hit the national retailers’ radar. And yet we have million visitors, so our audience of shoppers is actually much larger,” he said.
However, he doesn’t think that’ll slow down business growth in the Myrtle Beach. “We’d like to think that we’ll keep growing. Certainly the great recession of 7/8 years ago put a dent in things but we have bounced back and are above those pre-recession levels.”