Steve Mensing, Editor
♦ The City of Salisbury, N.C., ever amusing, is dreaming big dreams. In Salisbury’s downtown area, already awash with plenty of empty apartments and office spaces going unrented, our city government is proposing building more of the same. Yes–more apartments in downtown Salisbury. Nobody is pulling your leg. They are even attempting to sell the idea to the local merchants that these new apartments will lure more people into the downtown area to shop and dine. Hordes of them.
Many ever hopeful merchants once believed a Central Office at 329 S. Main would be populated with administrators who would spend $5,000 per person per year. No one bothered to tell our merchants that most administrators (a) Travel out into the county and eat elsewhere. Or. (b) Gobble down lunches heated up in microwave ovens or stuff down sandwiches from brown bags. Mercifully 329 S. Main never happened.
Building even more unoccupied apartment units is not as ludicrous as it surely must appear. Someone profits from their construction and so do those who “assist” in their construction coming into being. While some profit, the downtown area will be left with larger amounts of “empty spaces”. Perhaps Salisbury can be promoted as the “Great Empty City of North Carolina”. If that branding doesn’t work, Salisbury might capitalize on its growing fame as the “ISIS Center of the United States” made famous by Salisbury’s Don Morgan, disciple of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and founder of the Islamic Center of Salisbury.
Who pays for all of this apartment construction?
Will Downtown Salisbury become a miniature version of the “Great Empty Cities of China”–the greatest “build it and they will come” ventures of this era? The odds are extremely high especially in the light that few are being drawn in the center of our burg.
Here a “Sixty Minutes” video about the “Great Empty Cities of China”:
