Now Deliver on Terminal

Horry can't tolerate any more project delays

Keenly aware that many residents have turned against the proposed 14-gate west-side terminal at Myrtle Beach International Airport, an Horry County Council majority kept the project alive Tuesday. In appropriating $6.2 million more for terminal planning, the seven council members who voted yes are betting that Airports Director Bob Kemp can deliver a final plan - and a guaranteed maximum project price - by the end of the year. Kemp and his masters in county administration dare not disappoint them.

This yes vote took some guts. In the works for five years, the terminal project has come together at a snail's pace as its projected price tag crept higher, thanks mainly to the rising cost of steel, concrete and other construction materials. The current $228.8 million estimated final price would deliver a project stripped down from its original vision to keep costs within the county's ability to pay.

The need to cope with those rising costs slowed the pace of project planning after County Council formally launched the project in 2004. Progress also slowed after the county severed its relationship with the original design firm in December.

Rising airplane fuel prices, meanwhile, prompted airlines to shrink Myrtle Beach flight offerings, driving down passenger traffic through the airport. In April, Hooters Air ceased operations, a victim of uncontrollable fuel costs. Its demise shrunk traffic even further, prompting many residents to wonder whether there was any point in building a new terminal.

Then, last month, came word that Kemp and company had exhausted the original $12.3 million council planning appropriation, with construction plans less than half completed. Kemp and county administration estimated that another $6.2 million would take planning through to completion. If the council complied, they said, Kemp and his construction management firm, Skanska, could deliver the final plan in December, at or close to the $228.8 million estimate. The county, at last, would have a price above which the cost for completing the terminal would never go.

Fairly or unfairly, though, Kemp had lost his credibility with many residents - not to mention some County Council members. Tuesday's council vote became, in effect, a moment of truth for the project itself. Had the council refused airport management the $6.2 million, the project today would be dead.

Now that Chairwoman Liz Gilland and Councilmen Howard Barnard, Paul Prince, Bob Grabowski, James Frazier and Carl Schwartzkopf have kept the project alive, Kemp and county administration must - must - deliver. Another price-increasing delay might not trigger public insurrection in the streets of Horry County, but it likely would bring the terminal project's gutsy supporters to their knees under a relentless hail of I'll-never-vote-for-you-agains and unprintable epithets.

Why continue with the project? Because, as Gilland noted Tuesday, "If you believe in this county and the future of tourism, the need [for the terminal] will come and we will be ready for it," The majority understands that air travel is our resort communities' best hope of expanding annual tourist visits, our wealth-enhancement mainstay. In time, most residents will be glad that a council majority, back in 2006, bucked popular option to push the project over the finish line.