The Horry County Administration Committee met on Tuesday, March 25, 2025, at 1:00 p.m. in the County Council Conference Room. Chairman Tyler Servant presided. The committee reviewed and approved several resolutions, received updates on economic development, finances, and public information efforts, and discussed a trial period for wind-driven shading devices on county beaches.
Administration committee meeting to order for the Tuesday March 25th meeting. Everybody would rise for the indication and the Pledge of Allegiance. You would bow your heads. Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for bringing us here today safely. Thank you for all the blessings that you bestow on us each and every day. And please guide us today as we make these decisions. Important decisions for Ray County. In your name we pray. I'm in. And to the Republicans under God. There is no public input or anybody signed up today, so we'll move on to the review and approval of the agenda context. All in favor, aye. Ayes have it. Moving on to the approval of the minutes for February 25th, 2025 meeting. So move. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Ayes have it. Moving on to new business, the Myrtle Beach Regional Economic Development Corporation. Ms. Davis. Welcome. Good afternoon. So Act T in the first quarter of 2025 has increased significantly since the election in terms of generating new leads and the rise in projects visiting. We have had more visits from companies, increased interest in our area, and more projects from the site selectors. Leads are currently 222 open leads. We were down to 150 of January. If you all will remember at the last admin meeting we attended in 2024, we said that each year we go through all of them at the beginning of the year, close out anyone who is no longer interested. So we were over 400, and we got it down to 250, and now we're already back up to 222. So we have had 42 projects as of today. And on our marketing mission right now, Zach is meeting with five companies in Wisconsin and Minnesota on a marketing mission that was a joint venture with NISA that they paid for. So we're very excited to have that opportunity. And last week I met with 10 companies at the Seafood Expo in Boston. Everything went really great. That was last Sunday to Tuesday, the week of March 10th through the 13th. Randy visited Connecticut and Rhode Island on a marketing mission and met with seven new companies. And for those of you who are not aware, Zach Nalen and Randy Davies joined our team in the last quarter of last year so that we would be able to have more people traveling and also people here handling our projects when they come into town because it never fails that if we're going out of town, that's when the project's gonna be in town. Much like last week when I was out of town. So I want to thank um Tom and Johnny for meeting with the project last week on Monday. Also February 11th through the 13th, I attended the Miami Boat Show and met with nine companies. One of our big pushes this year is to try to locate someone at the Bucksport Marine Park, and we have already had three companies visit tour of Bucksport Marine Park since January. So we are hopeful that this is going to be our year to land a tenant at uh Bucksport Marine Park. As of January 1st, the MBRDC has generated 48 new leads, and I am comparing that to the 63 that we generated in Autumn 2024. So you can see that we have actually been on the rise this year. There is another marketing mission, um, many more marketing missions planned for this year. We'll be doing some on our own. I think we have four more on our own and two more with Nixon. We also have two trade shows with CNT Cooper already um planned, which is Select USA and the Fort Lauderdale Boat Show. Another thing that we have added to our list as of last year that seems to really pull in a lot of projects and site selectors is the PGA Myrtle Beach Classic Golf Tournament.