ZONING LAXITY PROMPTED CLINIC MESS

Tighter, More Rational Location Rules Could Minimize Such Disputes

Maybe the Horry County Board of Adjustment and Zoning Appeals did mess up
recently in approving a methadone clinic for the gateway to Fantasy
Harbour. But critics of that decision, most prominently S.C. Rep. Thad
Viers, R-Socastee, are wrong to focus their ire on the board. Their real
issue is with the loosey-goosey rules with which Horry County Council has
saddled the zoning board.

The county - the former regional, if not national, capital for illegal
opiate-based OxyContin sales - likely needs a methadone clinic. But current
rules offer too wide a range of zones in which such a business can be located.

The county should allow drug-treatment facilities only near other medical
facilities, as is the case in Myrtle Beach. That way, there would be less
confusion and fewer disputes about incompatible competing uses. That way,
growth that might strike some residents as unacceptable could be channeled
to locations where negative public reaction is likely to be minimal.

What we have here is a classic case of the public unhappiness that can
ensue when the zoning board, a quasi-judicial body whose decisions are
appealable only to the circuit court, uses the flexibility that the law
allows it.

County zoning rules say that clinics of this sort can be no closer than
2,000 feet to churches, residences and schools. But the board has latitude
to allow reasonable exceptions.

In the case of Greenville-based Center of Hope, which would own and operate
the clinic, a school and residences lay closer than 2,000 feet from the
proposed site on George Bishop Parkway. The board granted the exception for
the River Oaks complex because it's located across U.S. 501.

The minutes don't show why the board allowed the clinic within 2,000 feet
of Bridgewater Academy, a charter school. But given the broadness of the
streets between the clinic and the schools, as well as the mixed-use nature
of the buildings and heavy traffic on the parkway, the clinic should pose
no significant problem for the school, either.

Considering that the clinic site is a former nightclub of sordid
reputation, we find it hard to take protests about the clinic location all
that seriously. We also wonder whether the protesters are in denial that
Horry County needs such a facility.

Consider: Center of Hope estimates that 200 local folks use methadone
treatment, which they now must travel long distances to obtain. This seems
credible, considering that a now-closed pain-management-focused Myrtle
Beach physicians' practice sold OxyContin illegally to virtually anyone who
asked for a prescription.

So the clinic's prospective patients wouldn't be the main-lining
hunch-shouldered heroin junkies of yore. Like radio commentator Rush
Limbaugh, they would be mainly respectable folks who got hooked on
controlled substances that - initially, at least - they bought legally.

The clinic, by law, has a presumptive right to open and operate. So it
could sue the county should the zoning board succumb to public pressure to
rescind its approval of the Bishop Parkway site. If the board refuses to
rescind the decision, Viers says, residents will sue.

More unpleasantness apparently lies ahead. As residents endure it, they
might reflect that until County Council tightens and rationalizes the
zoning codes, more disputes of this sort are inevitable.