'Plan B' Stinks

Council should reaffirm terminal commitment

Planning for the new 14-gate west-side passenger terminal at Myrtle Beach International Airport has not gone as well as some Horry County Council members would have liked. But planning hiccups are not a valid reason for canceling the terminal project, as they propose to do. Their backup plan for handling future Myrtle Beach air traffic - let's call it Plan B - is fraught with problems.

The complaining council members are not wrong to be disillusioned about the terminal project's progress. Ideally, airport management would have gotten father along on planning before exhausting its council authorization to spend about $12 million to develop a guaranteed maximum price for the project. The guaranteed minimum price, now estimated to be $228.8 million, is that magical total-cost figure that the contractor who builds the terminal can never exceed.

Tuesday is the make-or-break day for the project. Airport Director Bob Kemp will go before the council to seek another $6.2 million to finish planning work on the terminal's guaranteed maximum price, which he says should be completed in December. If the council majority follows the naysayers' lead and refuses to make the appropriation, the terminal project will die. Development of a construction contract with a fixed final cost cannot continue without planning money.

Council members who have turned against the project, as well as those who have never supported it, say that cancelling it would be for the best. For far less than the $228.8 million that the west-side terminal would cost, they say, Horry County could refurbish the current east-side airport terminal to handle Myrtle Beach air traffic for a generation to come - Plan B.

On first glance, Plan B looks attractive. By blowing out the north wall, airport management could add more gates back along Harrelson Boulevard toward U.S. 17 Bypass. Expanding and refurbishing the terminal probably would cost less than building the new one - though what you'd end up with is the terminal equivalent of a cramped old house to which a few bedrooms have been added.

That approach probably would be OK if the council really wants to rescind its 2003 approval of the west-side plan and expand airport passenger capacity on the cheap. But that's not the only reason Plan B stinks.

Plan B could also sour relations between the county and the city of Myrtle Beach, which right now are going well. The main reason that's so is the 2004 agreement that ended decades of city-county squabbling over the airport and related issues.

One facet of the agreement was the county's promise to extend, at its expense, Harrelson Boulevard between the north gate of the airport and U.S. 17 Business, creating a much-needed arterial route across the south end of the city. If the county stuck with the east-side terminal, the extended roadway would eat up land now devoted to parking lots and the terminal access road. Cross-town traffic, in short, would be whizzing virtually past the terminal door - an undesirable situation.

The only other option - a terrible one - would be to renege on the Harrelson Boulevard deal with the city. That move would surely reignite city-county animosity. The council doesn't want to go there.

The west-side terminal is the plan for the future of the airport. For all the problems it has encountered, it is still a good project. The council should approve the $6.2 million Tuesday, while reaffirming its intent to continue with the terminal project. It has no other viable option.