Jonathon Morris, U.S. Army Ranger, Ret. and Rowan County Sheep Baron
♦ The kangaroo court passing itself off as the Salisbury planning board meeting is the kind of nonsense that makes us county dwellers glad we don’t live in Salisbury or desire to go anywhere near it. The deck was stacked against Mr. Leatherman. Salisbury needs every fast food joint they can lay their hands on and every dollar store they can get. Beggars can’t be choosers.
I saw elsewhere where some Salisbury real estate owner Dianne Green, who knocked John Leatherman’s Zaxby’s Chicken proposal to the city planning board, saying, “So many businesses have come here, and their CEOs will not live here because they think Salisbury looks like East Innes Street.”
WHAT? Diane Green needs to be clued in. The East Innes Street retail corridor and Jake Alexander Blvd are the only remotely “vibrant” areas left in Salisbury. Downtown’s Main Street is genuinely scary with all those vacancies. Looks like Chemical Ali nerve gassed the freaking place. The real reasons why CEOs and executives avoid the Bury is because they don’t want to deal with Salisbury’s kick-ass crime, bum schools or add some glue sniffer to their family tree. CEO’s all move to Mooresville, Lake Norman, or some secure development far from the Bury.
Main Street Salisbury is embarrassing. It makes an iron clad case for why Historic Preservation Salisbury style doesn’t work. Scope out everyone of those vacant former Main street businesses. All of them are historic preservation buildings. The city will take a major step forward when it drags the Empire and the Shober Bridge off to a landfill before they both topple.
The Historic Tax credits was a gravy train for the city’s favorite cronies. Somebody ought to show where all the millions in investment disappeared. Downtown Salisbury is a rat hole. Somebody needs to publish a list of all the brokered checks for Downtown Historic Preservation investment. Taxpayers have a right to know where all their money was divvied up among City Hall’s cronies. Was it tax free?
Just sayin’.
