Jim Moore, director of business development for the North Eastern Strategic Alliance, is the top candidate to become CEO of the Myrtle Beach Regional Economic Development Corp.

Moore, who must be formally approved by the EDC executive board before he is hired, was to be introduced to members of the Horry County Council at a 1 p.m. meeting Friday.

If hired, he will replace former CEO Brad Lofton, who left this summer to take an economic development job in middle Georgia. Lofton had been CEO for more than three years.

“He’s a natural fit,” Fred Richardson, the EDC’s board chairman, said of Moore.