Steve Mensing, Editor
♦ According to legislative insiders historic preservation groups will have to go elsewhere for money. The legislature is about to end frivolous tax credits for historic preservation.
Perhaps historic preservation groups need to look for private “touches” or seek favor with an Abandoned Cities Program willing to consider Salisbury’s many downtown decaying and obsolete buildings. Let private donors fill the void instead of taxpayers profoundly disinterested in lining the pockets of historic preservation renovators. Most of us care little about the hobby of rejuvenating deteriorating and vacant buildings.
If you want it–you pay for it. Most taxpayers are fed up with the many layers of sponging around the state.
Perhaps its time to go modern again with bright new shiny buildings. They provide construction jobs. The blight infesting downtown Salisbury, would be better served by a fleet of bulldozers to clear away all those derelict buildings and make room for the 21st century. There’s little special about Salisbury’s alleged history. Because a building is old and decaying doesn’t necessarily mean that any real history took place in it. Perhaps it might be more accurate to rebrand Salisbury as “Old Salisbury” instead of “Historic Salisbury”
In 1855 the Empire Hotel was a modern hotel. So why not bulldoze it and replace it with something up-to-date and attractive. The Empire is a menacing eyesore with an interior requiring an multi-million dollar gutting. The Empire Hotel hasn’t been open to the public since 1963–51 years ago–when it was a flophouse. No one has wanted to touch this abomination since then. Who can guess the mental state of Downtown Salisbury Inc. when they somehow inveigled 7 banks to loan them money for the Empire’s purchase. In the aftermath of this ill-conceived buy, our downtown taxpayers, with troubles enough, were forced to shuck out something in the vicinity of an added 20 cents in MSD taxes for this rotter.
Like clockwork for nearly 10 years now the local newspaper yearly ballyhoos: “Fresh excitement by developers about the Empire and its endless possibilities!” During 2012–2013 some vast and calculating mind promoted the idea if you built a Central Office on 329 S. Main it would attract investment in the Empire Hotel. That theory mercifully never got tested.
The other day we read the claim: “Its been proven that historic preservation projects do generate jobs, do further activity and investment in communities and do promote tourism.” Okay historic preservation projects do generate jobs for historic renovators. However demolition projects also generate jobs for demolition companies and later for construction companies building new buildings. Some historic preservation projects fail to attract investment and its is not a given they promote tourism. It’s fairly obvious no one is pilgrimaging to our alleged historic Main Street area…except for gang tag graffiti artists and the Rowan Free Press to take photographs of “no trespassing” signs on the many businesses that quit.
With more and more middle and upper income families dumping their homes on the local housing market and riding off into the sunset due to Salisbury’s crime, substandard public education, and soaring 28% poverty, we might soon have a downtown qualifying for the Abandoned Cities Program or for certification as a national ghost town. Not bad for a burg without tumbleweed, playedout gold mines, and cut n’ shoot saloons.
The historic preservation people are carping that if historic preservation tax credits were cut they would have a disastrous effect on local economies, quality-of-life, and communities. We recognize most thoughtful individuals doubt this claim, but perhaps wish the tax credit loss would have a disastrous effect on historic preservation groups who ratchet up downtown taxes, create costly arbitrary and expensive codes that harm businesses, and block the path of modernity.
