Steve Mensing, Editor
♦ The central artery of Downtown Salisbury is Main Street with its scattered pockmarks of vacancies, decay, and decrepit buildings fit for bulldozing. The central artery serves as an ugly reminder that Salisbury has no viable downtown economic plan save for its various ruses to loot the county taxpayers to construct high-priced and unrequired buildings. Mercifully to date every suggested economic visioning building has wound up scrapped on the drawing board. Even the blundering city council had the good sense several years back to nix the Convention Center to be built where few adventurous souls dare to go unless it is to buy some heroin or meth: the South Main tenderloin.
Earlier some noble minds at Downtown Salisbury Inc. got excited about a “bulldozer ready” former flophouse “The Empire Hotel” which they blew over a million on several years back. For years now this seedy bat’s nest on South Main has gone unsold. Gosh this former flop house hasn’t been open since 1963–that would be a clue to most persons that this joint is carrying major baggage. Now Empire’s best options appear to be a wrecking ball or gutting its rotted interior and remaking it into a domed multi-tiered parking lot. The one positive in its favor is that it has generated a number of articles in the Rowan Free Press and every year, as if on cue, the city’s newsletter tells us developers are flooding into town showing heightened interest in the bat castle. Then these invisible developers do a quick fade into the ether.
Not so long ago in 2013 the city tried to nail the county taxpayers to build a proposed Taj Mahal for the school system on unstable, watery, and vapor intruded infill at 329 S. Main, but the county commissioners wisely said no to the deal. Enter the city council and it’s infamous city manager’s office. These vast minds, unsullied by forethought, attempted to convince the Local Government Commission the school Central Office is now a commercial building even though for well over a year its design was promoted as a school administration building. And to top it all, the city offered this “commercial building” with a 35 month lease to evade the Local Government Commission’s statutes.
What is more pathetic is that city hall and its economic development advisors believe the downtown central office will serve as an economic stimulator, drawing in millions in investment. Further they support these economic stimulator theories with absurd “studies” claiming the downtown Central Office’s inhabitants will generate $102 per person weekly. Problem is most admins eat out brown bags, microwaves, or a Hardee’s bargain sack if they even remain at the Central Office during the day and don’t go out into the field.
In current times cities grow economically from the periphery rather than from the downtown. Notice how Huntersville and similar cities grew.
Salisbury, because of lack of forethought and their chronic battling off even small chain retail, is now paying the price as they lap far behind other North Carolina cities in retail attractions. With the coming of retail giants to Summit on Julian Road and later to Southern Rowan because of the I-85 interchange, downtown’s ghostly Main Street’s future is bleak. Sadly, the NIMBYs. the shop locals, and the historic groups won and preserved downtown’s “historic character” of obsolete buildings without any real history. Now decay and vacancies rule. The barriers to economic development in Salisbury are exceedingly high as this article on the city’s livability ratings attests:
http://www.areavibes.com/salisbury-nc/livability/?r=&zip=28144&ll=35.7+-80.46603
Previous articles concerning downtown’s economic struggles:
http://rowanfreepress.com/2013/08/18/hard-times-on-salisburys-main-street-closings-multiply/
http://rowanfreepress.com/2013/06/30/salisburys-new-backdoor-super-economy-wigs-and-dollar-stores/
