Myrtle Beach considering year-round pay to park

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. — Myrtle Beach may no longer have an ‘off-season’.

Visitors and locals may have to pay for parking year-round in Myrtle Beach, WPDE reports.

The beach’s current paid parking season currently runs from the beginning of March through the end of October. Between 9 a.m. and midnight, neighborhood parking lots and street parking meters can cost anywhere from $2 to $15. The city’s ‘off-season’ may no longer exist if the city council votes for year-round parking.

WPDE spoke with Mark Kruea, the Public Information Director for Myrtle Beach, who said a goal of getting rid of the city’s ‘off-season’ is to decrease confusion about when and where to pay for parking.

“I know that sounds strange, but if you have regular parking throughout the year, there’s no learning curve for everybody when you go back to having paid parking in March or when you go away from having paid parking at the end of October,” Kruea told WPDE.

Myrtle Beach estimates that the new year-round paid parking will bring an additional quarter of a million dollars into the city. Kruea said the new funds will be given back to the city for different projects.

“The parking money gets reinvested back into the area from which it was generated, so it will go back into the downtown projects that we’re doing, the arts and innovation district, and it would also help provide additional parking down the road,” Kruea said.

The question is: how or if this new parking model will impact local businesses? WPDE spoke with Lauren Ross, a local restaurant manager who doesn’t think the change will impact her or other business owners anytime soon.

“Most people have the idea that they have to pay for parking; even when I’ve been outside of Myrtle Beach and I’ve visited somewhere in the off-season, my thought is, ‘Oh, I’m going to have to pay to park,’ whether that happens or not, so I don’t think it’s really going to affect too much,” Ross said. “I’m sure there will be one or two people, but not enough to make a really detrimental impact on business.”

If passed, the change won’t go into effect until July 1; residents and visitors won’t feel the impacts until the beginning of November, WPDE reports.

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