From Smokestacks to Sand: Conway’s 800-Acre Waterfront Transformation Is the Biggest Story on the Grand Strand

For fifty years, you knew you were getting close to Conway when the smokestacks appeared. Two 300-foot concrete towers rising out of the lowcountry green like monuments to a different era, visible from Highway 501 for miles, as much a landmark of the drive to the beach as the South of the Border signs or the first salt-air breath at the Intracoastal. The Grainger Generating Station burned coal to light the Grand Strand from the 1960s until 2012, and when its stacks finally came down in 2016, the skyline along the Waccamaw River went quiet for the first time in half a century.

What nobody driving past that empty site could have guessed is what Conway has been quietly planning to put in its place. An inland beach. A 100-slip marina. A 3.5-mile extension of the Conway Riverwalk threading through wetlands and connecting the entire downtown waterfront into one continuous corridor. An amphitheater. A mixed-use village of shops, restaurants, a hotel and waterfront residences. Eight hundred acres of former industrial land — given to the city by Santee Cooper, cleared of more than a million tons of coal ash, certified safe by state regulators, and now officially in the hands of the people of Conway — becoming what City Administrator Adam Emrick has compared to a state park in the middle of downtown.

That is not a someday-maybe idea on a planning board. The land transfer is complete. The annexation vote passed. The $80 million financing plan is approved. Engineering is underway. A canal on the property has already reopened for public boating and fishing — the first concrete step in a transformation that Conway’s mayor has called a once-in-a-generation opportunity and that Emrick, who has shepherded the project for years, puts in even starker terms: once every several generations does a city get a chance like this.

For anyone who vacations on the Grand Strand — and especially for the families who come back year after year to the quieter sands of North Myrtle Beach — this is worth watching. Conway is already one of the best day trips on the coast, and it is about to become something no other small town in the Carolinas can match.

The Ghost of the Grainger Plant

The backstory matters because it explains why 800 acres of prime waterfront land existed in the first place, hidden in plain sight along one of the busiest highways in Horry County. The Grainger Generating Station was a Santee Cooper coal-fired power plant that sat at the intersection of U.S. 501 and the Waccamaw River, less than a mile from downtown Conway. Lake Busbee, a 330-acre man-made cooling pond, sprawled across the other side of the highway, and together the plant and its support infrastructure occupied roughly 808 acres of land that the public was not allowed to use.

The plant ran for decades, powering the Grand Strand through its transformation from a quiet beach town into one of the most visited resort coasts on the East Coast. It closed in 2012. The twin smokestacks came down in 2016, and with them went the last visible evidence that the site had ever been industrial at all. What remained was the land itself — hundreds of acres of waterfront straddling the highway, flanked by the river and the wetlands, in the middle of a county that was growing faster than almost anywhere in the Southeast. Conway’s leaders saw the opportunity immediately. It just took a decade to get the land.

The path ran through a coal ash cleanup (more on that below), a Santee Cooper board vote in December 2023, a Joint Bond Review Committee approval in March 2024, and a formal property transfer completed in April 2025. On July 23, 2025, Conway held a public ceremony to mark the acquisition, and city officials, Santee Cooper leaders and community members stood on the land together for the first time as owners. The smokestacks were gone. The coal ash was gone. And the vision — the one Emrick had been describing in council meetings and planning retreats for years — was finally, officially, possible.

What Is Coming: Inland Beach, Marina, Riverwalk and Amphitheater

The plan for the former Grainger site is ambitious in scope but disciplined in its conservation commitment. Of the roughly 808 acres, approximately 533 acres — essentially all of Lake Busbee — have been rezoned to the city’s Conservation Preservation district and will be left in their restored natural state as wetlands and wildlife habitat. The Waccamaw National Wildlife Refuge is expected to help tend the lake. Only 12 to 15 acres are designated for private commercial development. Everything else becomes public space — trails, water, sand and sky.

The centerpiece is the inland beach, planned for the site of the former Coal Ash Pond No. 1 — the pond closest to the Horry County Government Annex, which has been fully cleared, remediated and certified safe for public use by the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control. The beach will be a freshwater recreation area designed for swimming, kayaking and paddleboarding in a controlled environment without motorized boat traffic — a distinction that will appeal to families with young children who want the water without the worry.

Adjacent to the beach, the city plans a new inland marina with approximately 100 boat slips, which would connect to the Waccamaw River and relieve the persistent waitlist problem at Conway’s existing downtown marina. An amphitheater for concerts, festivals and community events is planned near the intersection of Elm Street and Marina Drive, at the site of old tennis courts. And threading through it all: a 3.5-mile extension of the Conway Riverwalk, weaving through wetlands and restored landscapes to link the new recreation zone to the existing downtown Riverwalk along the Waccamaw. When complete, the combined walkway system will create one of the longest continuous waterfront trails in the South Carolina lowcountry.

The Mixed-Use Village

The 12 to 15 acres set aside for private development would be brought to life through public-private partnerships once the infrastructure is in place. Draft plans show a mixed-use village with shops, restaurants, a hotel and waterfront condominiums — the kind of walkable, water-facing development that has worked at Market Common in Myrtle Beach, another former military/industrial site successfully converted to community use. Mayor Barbara Blain-Bellamy has said the area could see restaurants, shops, boat docks and possibly a downtown hotel or two, all tied into the broader recreational footprint. The scale is modest by design: this is not a high-rise district. It is a village that sits inside a park.

The Cleanup That Made It Possible

No story about this property is complete without the part that people rightly ask about first: the coal ash. The Grainger plant left behind two ash ponds containing residual coal combustion waste — material that, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, can contain contaminants including mercury, cadmium and arsenic. In 2013, the Southern Environmental Law Center sued Santee Cooper over pollution at the site, and the two sides reached a settlement that set the cleanup in motion.

Over the following years, Santee Cooper removed more than a million tons of coal ash from the two ponds, dug an additional foot of soil from beneath the pits, and restored the land above to wetlands. Santee Cooper CEO Jimmy Staton addressed the safety question directly at the July 2025 celebration, stating that the utility went through extensive remediation and that people should not be concerned about any lingering effects. DHEC has certified the former Ash Pond No. 1 as safe for the recreational purposes the city intends to use it for. Santee Cooper will continue to monitor groundwater at the site going forward. Lake Busbee itself still carries environmental restrictive covenants from the closure process and will be left in its restored natural state rather than opened for swimming or fishing — a decision that honors both the ecological reality and the conservation commitment at the heart of the project.

The canal that once served the plant’s industrial operations has already been restored and opened to the public for boating and fishing, a milestone that Mayor Blain-Bellamy confirmed in July 2025 and called the first step in the city’s vision for the property. As the mayor put it: what once held coal ash now holds opportunity, and what once served machines will now serve people.

How Conway Is Paying for It: The $80 Million Plan

The financial architecture behind this project is as deliberate as the land plan. Conway carries no municipal debt — a remarkable fact for a city of its size — and the initial phases of the project will be funded through hospitality fee revenue already collected by the city. For the larger build-out, the city created a Tax Increment Financing (TIF) district covering the downtown and Lake Busbee area, a financing tool that allows the city to fund infrastructure improvements using the property tax revenue generated by the new development itself. Conway City Council approved the TIF ordinance in December 2025.

City officials project that the TIF district could generate as much as $170.5 million in revenue over the coming decades — far more than the $80 million price tag of the public infrastructure plan — making the project self-sustaining over time. It is the same financing model that helped transform the former Myrtle Beach Air Force Base into Market Common, and Conway’s leaders have cited that precedent as proof of concept. The private-side development (hotels, restaurants, residences) would come later through public-private partnerships and would not rely on city funds.

Timeline: When Will It Be Built?

This is the question everyone asks, and the honest answer is: it is a multi-year, multi-phase project, and the city has been transparent about the timeline. City Administrator Adam Emrick has said publicly that engineering work alone will take 18 to 24 months — a period of site planning, permitting and design that began after the July 2025 land transfer. Following that, he has estimated two to three years of construction to bring the major elements online. The WMBF report from the July 2025 celebration cited a five- to six-year total window before residents and visitors see the full transformation take shape.

Importantly, Emrick has said the work will be phased so that people start seeing visible progress before the entire project is complete. The canal is already open. Trail connections, the Riverwalk extension and the inland beach are likely among the earlier phases; the mixed-use village and hotel components, which depend on private-sector partnerships, will follow once the public infrastructure is in place. WBTW reported in July 2025 that officials cited a three-year construction timeline for the inland beach and kayaking areas specifically.

What visitors to the Grand Strand should expect in the near term: the property is not yet a recreation destination in 2026, but you can already boat and fish the restored canal, and the Lake Busbee trail remains accessible to walkers and birders. The real construction activity — earthmoving, boardwalk pilings, beach grading — will become visible over the next two to three years, and if the phased timeline holds, the first major public amenities could open as early as 2028 or 2029. For a project of this scale, that is remarkably fast.

Conway’s Riverwalk Is Already Worth the Drive

Even before a single shovel hits the Grainger site, Conway is a town that rewards the visitor who makes the twenty-minute drive inland from the beach. The existing Conway Riverwalk runs along the Waccamaw River through downtown, a boardwalk of cypress planks over dark water, lined with live oaks and Spanish moss, connecting shops and restaurants to the marina and the old railroad trestle. On a weekday morning it belongs to joggers and dog walkers; on a Saturday evening it belongs to families finishing dinner at Rivertown Bistro or walking to the Theatre of the Republic for a show. The city recently completed a Riverwalk expansion connecting the riverfront to Main Street, adding floating docks, irregular-shaped viewing decks and gated access near Kingston Presbyterian Church — a roughly $2.3 million project that bridged the gap between downtown and the water.

Downtown Conway itself is a Main Street town in the best sense of the phrase: locally owned shops, a weekly farmers market, the Horry County Museum, the Conway Glass & Art Gallery, bakeries and bookshops and the kind of storefront restaurants where the owner knows your name by the second visit. The Theatre of the Republic, a community theater that has been producing plays in the old fire station on Main Street since 1968, is a genuine local institution. The Waccamaw River — blackwater, cypress-lined, rich with wildlife — is a kayaking destination in its own right, and guided paddling tours launch from the marina regularly during the warmer months.

This is the foundation onto which the Lake Busbee project is being built. The Riverwalk extension will not start from scratch; it will connect to a waterfront system that already works and already draws visitors. Adding 3.5 miles of new trail, an inland beach, a 100-slip marina and an amphitheater does not change what Conway is — it amplifies it. The town that has always been the quiet, oak-shaded heart of the Grand Strand is about to have the physical space to match that identity at a scale nobody expected.

Making the Day Trip from North Myrtle Beach

Conway is roughly 20 miles from North Myrtle Beach, a straight shot west on Highway 9 or south on Highway 17 to Highway 501. From Cherry Grove Beach or Ocean Drive, plan on 30 to 40 minutes. From Crescent Beach or Windy Hill, closer to 25 to 35 minutes. It is one of the easiest and most underrated day trips from the beach, especially on a rainy morning or a hot afternoon when a change of scenery sounds better than another hour under an umbrella.

Right now, the Riverwalk, the downtown shops, the museums and the kayaking are reason enough to go. In a few years, when the inland beach opens and the extended boardwalk threads through the wetlands and the amphitheater starts hosting summer concerts, Conway will be a full-day destination — the kind of place where families staying in an oceanfront home or oceanfront condo in North Myrtle Beach build an entire day around the river, the trails, the shops and the food, then drive back to the ocean for sunset.

Mayor Blain-Bellamy has said that Conway wants to re-establish itself not just as a destination but as the gateway to the Grand Strand — the place visitors pass through on 501 and stop because they cannot help themselves. With 800 acres of waterfront, an inland beach, a new marina and a Riverwalk that could soon rival any in the state, that gateway is about to have a very different front door.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources: WBTW News13, “Conway celebrates historic transfer of Lake Busbee property into city limits,” Adam Benson (July 24, 2025); WMBF News, “‘Once-in-a-generation opportunity’: Santee Cooper transfers 800 acres to city of Conway for redevelopment” (July 23, 2025); WPDE ABC15, “Conway’s plan to transform old coal plant into vibrant waterfront” (July 24, 2025); MyHorryNews, “Conway leaders look to rezone former ash pond, Lake Busbee site,” S.T. Cardinal (July 22, 2025); The Post and Courier Myrtle Beach, “Power plant to marina? Santee Cooper looks to transfer 800-plus acres to Conway,” Charles D. Perry (December 5, 2023); WBTW News13, “Conway, Horry County school officials meet over city’s planned $80M downtown redevelopment vision” (November 18, 2025); WBTW News13, “Conway leaders advance financing plan for $80M downtown revitalization project” (December 2, 2025); Santee Cooper press release, “Santee Cooper Approves Transactions That Offer Significant Community Benefits” (December 4, 2023); City of Conway official site, Riverwalk Expansion announcement. Project details, timelines and plans verified as of July 2026 and are subject to change as engineering and permitting progress.