WWII, the Cold War,
and a Comeback Story.

Most redevelopment projects turn closed military bases into industrial parks or strip malls. Myrtle Beach turned its base into one of the country’s most-cited examples of smart urban reuse.

The street naming convention is the most visible sign of that intentional history preservation. Every street in Market Common is named for a person connected to the Air Force base — Wing Commanders, Base Commanders, notable veterans. Over 150 historical markers line the streets, parks, and bike paths, giving residents and visitors a walkable tour of the base’s history. You can live here for years and keep discovering new stories — which is exactly what Buddy Styers intended when he submitted each name to the City of Myrtle Beach.

Walk to Dinner, the Movie,
the Bookstore. Then the Beach.

Market Common is the only place on the Grand Strand where “walkable” isn’t a stretch — where residents actually leave their cars in the garage and use their feet. This is what the New Urbanism planning philosophy looks like when it’s executed properly.

Howard Avenue runs through the heart of Market Common as its primary commercial corridor — a vegetated median with fountains, gazebos, and a walkway divides the street. Ground floors hold boutique shops, cafes, barber shops, florists, and restaurants. Upper floors are apartments and condos. The concept is intentional: the people who live above the shops can walk downstairs to buy a book, eat dinner, and see a film, all without getting in a car.

National retailers include Anthropologie, Pottery Barn, White House Black Market, and Barnes & Noble — anchors that give the district genuine retail gravity. Local boutiques fill in around them. The restaurant lineup is diverse and genuinely good: not a tourist strip with chain mediocrity, but a mix of local operators and established concepts that residents actually choose over everywhere else. A movie theater completes the lifestyle trifecta that makes urban village living work.

The parks system is one of Market Common’s most underappreciated residential advantages. Valor Memorial Garden (Valor Park) and the Grand Park athletic complex are both city-owned and publicly accessible, meaning residents don’t pay extra HOA fees to use the park infrastructure that surrounds their homes. Soccer fields, baseball fields, a fitness trail circling a lake, paved biking and walking paths, picnic areas, and fishing spots are all woven into the community fabric.

The airport is 5 minutes from Market Common — close enough that residents use it routinely without planning around it, far enough that it doesn’t define the neighborhood’s sound environment. For a community built literally adjacent to a former military airfield, the practical airport proximity is a genuine daily-use advantage rather than a nuisance.

One District.
A Full Range of Options.

Market Common’s residential component grew in layers — live-work condos above retail first, then surrounding single-family neighborhoods, townhomes, and eventually the 55+ community that has become one of the most recognized active adult options on the Grand Strand.

The residential communities within and around Market Common span price points from the low $200s to the mid $600s, product types from studio condos to 5-bedroom Charleston-style homes, and lifestyle orientations from walkable-urban to quiet-suburban. What unifies them is proximity to the district’s walkable core and access to the public parks and amenities that are woven into the urban village fabric.

What Buyers Find
When They Actually Search.

Market Common’s price range reflects its product diversity. Entry-level access exists via Windsor Gate townhomes and Seagate Village condos at the low end, while The Reserve, Cresswind, and larger Emmens Preserve homes push into the mid-$500s. The core of the market — 3–4 bedroom single-family and townhome product in Emmens Preserve, Sweetgrass Square, and the Howard Avenue district — runs from approximately $330,000 to $500,000 based on current CCAR MLS listing data.

Market Common has historically commanded a premium over comparable square footage elsewhere in the Myrtle Beach market — reflecting the lifestyle value that walkability, the parks, and the retail proximity actually deliver. Buyers comparing a Market Common townhome to a similar-sized townhome in a suburban community five miles inland consistently find the walkability premium is real and they’re willing to pay it.

Not for Everyone.
Exactly Right for a Specific Buyer.

Market Common is the most consistently self-selecting community on the Grand Strand. Buyers who want a quiet community with a large lot don’t end up here. Buyers who want to be away from any sense of activity don’t end up here. But the buyers who are looking for something genuinely different from every other Grand Strand option — walkable, character-rich, historically grounded, close to the beach without being on it — find their answer here and almost never look back.

• Buyers who moved from a city and can’t adjust to pure suburbia — Market Common is the closest approximation to urban village living available anywhere in the Grand Strand market. The people who end up here most happily are often the ones who loved city life in the Northeast and couldn’t find a coastal equivalent anywhere else at this price
• Active adult buyers who want the 55+ lifestyle without isolation — Cresswind sits inside a walkable district. Residents can walk to dinner, the movie theater, and Barnes & Noble without getting in a car. Most 55+ communities don’t offer that. This one does, and it’s consistently one of the reasons Cresswind shows up on every shortlist for active adult buyers doing serious research
• Families and individuals who use parks as daily infrastructure, not occasional amenities — Grand Park, Valor Park, the bike trail system, and Savannah’s Playground are not amenity brochure photos. They are used daily by residents who chose Market Common specifically because the outdoor infrastructure existed before they arrived
• History-oriented buyers who value a community with a story — most new communities in the Grand Strand have no history at all. Market Common’s history goes back to World War II, includes the Doolittle Raiders, and is preserved in 150+ markers you can read on your morning walk. That matters to a specific kind of buyer, and there’s no competing community for them
• Frequent flyers and second-home buyers managing logistics — 5 minutes to Myrtle Beach International is a real-time advantage, not a marketing approximation. For buyers flying in monthly from the Northeast, the time savings compounds meaningfully over a year
• Buyers who want beach access without coastal-zone trade-offs — approximately 1 mile to the ocean, outside the highest flood-risk zones, away from the tourist corridor, with Myrtle Beach State Park as the nearest public beach. The beach is genuinely part of daily life here without the insurance premiums and seasonal chaos of being on it