North Myrtle Beach’s planning staff are asking the Planning Commission to put off Amazon’s drone launch pad a second time, to October 20, and the staff report posted Friday afternoon says a public workshop on the project has been scheduled for October 7. The commission meets Tuesday, October 6, at 5 p.m. in Council Chambers to hear the request, a minor amendment to the Palmetto Coast Industrial Park’s planned development district for a 13,627-square-foot fenced paddock behind Amazon’s same-day delivery building at 8651 Water Tower Road. The plans show six launch and landing pads, a divert pad, two banks of turn stations and an 8-foot barrier wall.
The city’s zoning administrator has classed the drone operation as accessory to the warehouse already approved on the site, which keeps the decision with the five appointed commissioners and off the City Council agenda. Staff found nothing that would preclude approval, and the report says approval would not authorize a single flight: Amazon is separately pursuing the Federal Aviation Administration authorization it needs for that.
The staff report gives the workshop a date. The city’s online calendar for October 7 listed only a parks program when DroneXL checked it on Friday evening.
Staff Want the Vote Pushed to Oct. 20 After a Sept. 22 Motion Was Withdrawn
Minor PDD Amendment Z-26-22 reached the commission on September 22, where an approval motion was withdrawn and the item postponed for more information and public engagement, according to the October 6 staff report. The recommended motion for Tuesday is postponement to October 20.
The commission may approve, approve with modifications or conditions, disapprove, or postpone. It did not take staff’s advice on September 22, when the packet carried a ready-made approval motion and five findings of fact. Assistant planning director Suzanne Pritchard told WMBF News the city wanted to workshop the idea, and that the FAA governs the flying: “I think the city absolutely does have a say in where they would launch from.”
Tuesday’s agenda carries a second Amazon item, Z-26-24, for building and site signs at the same address. Staff want that one postponed too, for revised plans, and asked that the signs say North Myrtle Beach rather than Myrtle Beach.
The Plans Show Six Launch Pads, a Divert Pad and a Jersey-Barrier Wall
The paddock sits in a paved service lot behind the fulfillment center, on a 19.73-acre property, and removes 24 parking spaces. Its 8-foot (2.4-meter) enclosure is 32-inch concrete Jersey barriers topped with metal posts and privacy mesh. Inside: storage containers, turn stations, pads.
The architectural set, dated August 5, 2026 and drawn by Timothy Lott of Arlington, Texas, labels the site SSC3-PADDC, the acronym Amazon’s FAA filings use for a Prime Air Drone Delivery Center, and adds an operations cage inside the warehouse. The application was filed on August 18 by permit expediter Burnham Nationwide on behalf of the property’s owner and was complete on August 28. No new building, access drive, exterior lighting, antenna or tower is proposed, and the fire marshal, public works, planning and zoning all signed off at the conceptual stage. Battery charging and storage get their review at the building-permit stage.
The FAA’s drone environmental review index listed Amazon filings for Texas, Florida, Detroit, Kansas City, Omaha, Baton Rouge, Chicago and Tolleson on October 2, and none for South Carolina. Since the FAA signed a nationwide environmental finding for drone delivery on July 28, a site like this one can be authorized against the national study with no local comment period. The operating numbers that follow are Amazon’s own, from its other hubs, on the DroneXL Amazon Prime Air tracker.
The 7.5-Mile Circle Reaches Atlantic Beach, Barefoot and Myrtle Beach’s North End
Every Prime Air hub in Amazon’s FAA filings serves a 7.5-mile (12-kilometer) radius, about 174 square miles, with up to 1,000 MK30 flights a day. From Water Tower Road, that circle reaches Briarcliffe Acres at 2.2 miles, Atlantic Beach at 3, Barefoot Landing at 3.5 and City Hall at 4.9.
The hours in those filings run 6 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. Myrtle Beach’s north end, around 82nd Parkway and Arcadian Shores, is 5.3 miles out, inside. Longs is 7.3 miles and the Cherry Grove pier 7.6, on the line. Little River’s center sits 9.5 miles out and Carolina Forest 8.7, outside. DroneXL measured from Water Tower Road’s position in OpenStreetMap, not the parcel, and Amazon’s actual delivery boundary can exclude any of these.
Grand Strand Airport is 2.6 miles from the hub. Pritchard told WMBF the FAA keeps a large no-fly area around the city and the airport. The aircraft is the one Amazon flies at its US hubs: 83.2 pounds (38 kilograms) at takeoff, a 5-pound (2.3-kilogram) payload, a drop from about 13 feet (4 meters) over the lawn, and no parachute in any FAA filing DroneXL has read.
South Carolina’s New Drone Law Leaves the Launch Pad to the City
Act 150 of 2026, the Drone Regulation and Public Safety Act, takes effect January 1, 2027. Its preemption clause, S.C. Code § 55-1-230(A), bars local ordinances that conflict with the act or FAA rules, then lets a municipality restrict drone takeoff and landing sites. The paddock is one.
Governor McMaster signed the act on May 15, 2026 after unanimous votes in both chambers. Until it takes effect, South Carolina’s only drone-specific statute is § 24-1-300, which keeps drones away from prisons. The state has no drone-specific trespass or privacy law before or after January 1; § 16-17-470, the voyeurism statute, is the closest general provision. The act’s § 55-1-210(B) says nothing in it supersedes federal authority over airspace, so altitude, routes and hours in the air stay with the FAA.
That puts South Carolina closer to Massachusetts, where Westborough’s Planning Board still holds a site-plan vote, than to Florida, where state preemption stripped Tallahassee of the ordinance a commissioner asked for. North Myrtle Beach can decide whether the pad exists, and on what terms.
Three Levers Remain: Conditions, the Noise Record and the File
The first lever is the vote, whenever it comes. Staff told commissioners they may approve with conditions, and a condition written into Z-26-22 binds the site plan afterward. Pad hours, a departure cap or a flight-volume report are proposable; whether each survives preemption is the city attorney’s question.
The second is the noise record. The FAA’s noise appendix for Amazon’s Baton Rouge hub puts an MK30 in delivery hover at 92.1 dBA SEL measured 25 feet from the aircraft, and at 63.7 dBA SEL under a 200-foot cruise pass. Amazon’s Baton Rouge operations manager told a Rotary Club on September 9 that the aircraft is quieter than an idling delivery truck. Both belong in the city’s file with their distances attached, because the nationwide finding’s 600-foot setback from homes is calculated on an annual day-night average, and a backyard is not.
The third is the South Carolina Freedom of Information Act, S.C. Code § 30-4-10 and following. The Z-26-22 file, the zoning administrator’s accessory determination, and any correspondence between the city and Amazon about flight counts, routes or the workshop are public records, and the time to ask for them is while the item is open.
Who to Contact Before Tuesday
The Planning Commission meets October 6 at 5 p.m. in Council Chambers, 1018 2nd Avenue South, with a 9:15 a.m. workshop in the Planning and Development conference room and a YouTube stream on the agenda. Public comment is item 7. The chair is Silvio “Rocky” Cutuli; staff answer at (843) 280-5566.
Amazon’s Prime Air line is 1-888-280-4331, and the customer-service chat reaches the drone team through “Something Else” and then “Amazon Drone Delivery.” A resident inside the circle can opt out of a drop zone through the same path once service starts, and anyone ordering from Amazon will see the drone option only if their address qualifies. The FAA takes drone questions at 844-359-6982. DroneXL’s residents’ guide covers what applies in any town Amazon is entering.
Richardson Approved Its Pads in 2025 and Learned What It Had Signed in 2026
Richardson, Texas approved Amazon’s launch pads in 2025. By April 2026, after an MK30 struck an apartment building and residents counted drones over their pools, the city concluded it had no legal handle on the flights, dropped a rezoning threat on legal advice, and now points residents to their senators.
Amazon told Richardson’s council in March the hub filled about 150 orders a day. Its FAA approval allows 1,000. Westborough, Massachusetts is the other end of the same process: its Planning Board has refused Amazon’s request to delay a site-plan hearing while 92% of 853 survey respondents said they oppose the hub. In Westborough Amazon asked for the delay. In North Myrtle Beach the city’s own staff did.
North Myrtle Beach resident Jolene Puffer, who also writes for MyrtleBeachSC News, told WMBF: “Once we set a precedent, something happens forever.”
DroneXL’s Take
A staff recommendation to postpone, a workshop with a date, and a packet that spells out what the city can and cannot decide: my read is that North Myrtle Beach is doing in two weeks what Richardson did not do in a year, and that nobody there is running a trick. The accessory-use reading is defensible, and the state law that arrives in January says the pad is the city’s call. The risk is the one Richardson shows: a city that approved pads in 2025 was telling residents to call Washington by 2026, because nothing attached to the approval said anything about flight counts or hours, and the hub it approved at 150 orders a day holds FAA authorization for 1,000.
I’m for drone delivery where the flight earns its noise: blood, medication, a defibrillator across a bay. A box of sunscreen flown over Barefoot by an 83-pound aircraft with no parachute, built to carry 5 pounds where Zipline’s P2 carries 8 at 55, does not earn it, and my reading of every collision on the tracker is that an MK30 that hits something comes straight down.
The commission does not need to share that view to act on it. It needs to use October 7 to ask the city attorney, in public, which conditions will hold, and to write them into Z-26-22 on October 20. The October 7 workshop has a date in the staff report and no listing on the city calendar; the first thing to ask for Tuesday is the room and the time.
Sources: City of North Myrtle Beach, Planning Commission agenda and staff report, Oct. 6, 2026, Planning Commission packet, Sept. 22, 2026, WMBF News, MyrtleBeachSC News, South Carolina General Assembly, Act 150 of 2026, FAA drone environmental review index.
DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.
