When the base closed in 1993, Horry County leaders saw an opportunity to expand the airport. An initial vision was to construct two additional runways, new terminals, and dozens of additional gates. “The county attorney at the time was hellbent and determined to build Cape Canaveral out there. He wanted the biggest airport he could get,” long-time Horry County Register of Deeds Marion Foxworth said.

Mayor Mark Kruea, longtime public information director for the city, said the city had other plans for what to do with the land the base sat on. Public meetings were held and plans were made to turn the area into an urban village. The city annexed the land the Air Force Base was on into city limits in 1977.

“By 1995, the city had a complete booklet of what this would become, and what it became was pretty close to that 1995 plan,” Kruea said. “The city saw, I think, that it had the opportunity to do a master-planned community. You don’t usually have the chance to take that much land and do a from-the-ground-up community. “The city wanted to do a live-work community that’s sort of a neo-traditional town. Like the town I grew up in where people lived above the storefronts, and people could walk to commercial enterprises, restaurants, recreation.”

The Myrtle Beach Air Force Base Redevelopment Authority was formed, and a tax increment finance fund was established. The redevelopment authority brought on Air Force Col. Buddy Styers as executive director. 

“We put in the public infrastructure. By the time [developer Dan McCaffery] got here, we had demolished more than 50 obsolete Air Force buildings, we had built new roads, we had put in underground utilities, a regional stormwater management system, underground communication utilities—we had done all of that,” Styers said. “So he came here, there was nothing in his way, and the roads, utilities, everything was in place. He and his financier jumped on it and bought the property, about 110 acres, which is where the core downtown of The Market Common is, and went through the process of getting through the city’s permitting process.” Styers said the redevelopment authority quickly decided to back the city’s plans to transform the former base into an urban center.

“By the time I was here in August of 1995, the city had been convinced that what the property should become is an urban village,” Styers said. “Back then, that was the real, hot buzzword, and a lot of the former military installations became urban villages. “The city had already adopted a development plan for an urban village. It was ultimately the redevelopment authority’s decision what went here, not the city’s. So my first task was to decide what to do. Are we going to do our own plan, or are we going to adopt the city’s plan?

“We had no money. We were existing on a federal grant from the Air Force. So I made the decision that if we adopted the city plan, they would have to cooperate with us in accomplishing the plan. It was their plan—how could they fight me to do their plan? Well, that didn’t work 100% of the time, but mostly it did. So we adopted the city’s plan for an urban village.”

The county’s airport master plan to drastically expand the airport remained that: a plan. Foxworth fought against the airport’s expansion. He said he didn’t believe an airport should be downtown in the first place because FAA rules constricted development nearby, hampering the city’s urban growth.

“I actually got in a fight with my own council and staff over that airport master plan. We spent two years fighting over it. The City of Myrtle Beach Community Appearance Board got involved, and to make a long story short, we busted that master plan,” Foxworth said. “As part of a compromise, we passed an intergovernmental agreement that restricted the airport to one runway and 18 gates.”

But the decision to construct an additional terminal wasn’t halted immediately. A ribbon-cutting ceremony was even held, but progress on the terminal was stopped. Kruea said the terminal plans being thwarted made way for the International Technology and Aerospace Park, which now houses the DC Blox data center.

The redevelopment authority receives its funding from the TIF, and 5% of airport employee salaries go to the authority. Styers said that, as funding for the authority is set to sunset in four years, the buildout of the ITAP is one thing he hopes continues after the redevelopment authority is no more.

“We in the airport always wanted some aviation-related business in this International Technology and Aviation Park. Hopefully, someday the opportunity will pop up that they can put some kind of aviation-related business over there,” Styers said. “We had a couple opportunities, and they all fell through.”

Former Chief of Police Warren Gall, who was stationed at the base in the 1970s and assigned to the security police squadron, said he sees similarities in what the Air Force Base was in the ’70s and what The Market Common is now.

“A lot of people want to live there because they don’t have to drive. They can walk wherever they want to go, take a golf cart. It’s like you never have to venture out of there if you don’t want to, which is what we had at the base,” Gall said. “If we didn’t want to, we never had to venture off the base for anything that we needed. So the circle has kind of come all the way around. Obviously, now it’s all open to the public, which it wasn’t back then, but it’s its own little community, and I think as a result of that, the people are real proud of it.”

Howard Avenue runs through the heart of The Market Common commercial corridor and features cafés, barber shops, and florists on the ground floor, with apartments above. Howard Avenue is divided by a vegetated median with a walkway, fountains, and gazebos.

Clothing boutiques, cafés, restaurants, a comic shop, and furniture stores are nestled together within a city block—all walkable for the apartment dwellers living above, and a bike ride or short drive away from the thousands of single-family homes that surround the commercial corridor.

The history of the Air Force base is recognized throughout The Market Common area. A Wall of Service at Warbird Park recognizes thousands of veterans with granite nameplates. One hundred fifty-six historical markers scattered throughout The Market Common recognize the history of the base.

Some houses remain from the base, including the Seagate Village neighborhood, which served as housing for Air Force members’ families when the base was open. Back then, it was called Woodland Park.

The baseball diamonds in The Market Common have historical significance as well. In the ’40s and ’50s, spring training camps were held where the Air Force Base would eventually open. The Boston Braves and several other teams practiced there in the spring until the land reopened as a base in the mid-1950s.

Now, the Grand Park Athletic Complex attracts teams from across the Southeast year-round—an economic boon for the city and region. Recently, the park was renamed the Colonel Thomas “Buddy” Styers Athletic Complex.

The Market Common has been lauded as a successful redevelopment, and visiting the bustling urban center on a Saturday afternoon shows why. It’s one of the most active and fastest-growing areas of the city. Another project on the horizon is Market Walk, a new community of nearly 200 townhouse and cottage units to be built on the corner of Farrow Parkway and Phillis Boulevard.

“As we head toward the completion of The Market Common, I think a lot of people aren’t aware of the newness of the community,” Kruea said. “What you see is what we envisioned. This is what the city and redevelopment authority intended.”