Chuck Hughes, Board of Education
♦I believe the recent economic impact analysis by RowanWORKS citing that “redevelopment in the 300 block of S. Main Street will result in $1.25 million in annual retail impact” is very misleading. This statement might be true if a new business, hiring new employees, came to the 300 block. Outside of this very unlikely event, the economic impact statement would not apply to relocating RSSS employees to the new location on 300 So. Main Street. In addition, this rhetoric is in direct opposition to previous and highly questionable predictions that placing the Central Office with relocated employees would result in each employee spending $5,000 a year in their new location. The former assumption is totally taken out of context of a downtown Central Office; the second is fantasy at best since employees come to work before businesses open, they have only a half-hour for lunch and they leave just as most businesses are closing, our excellent late-hours restaurants being the exception.
I am not usually a skeptic (okay, I am a skeptic), but someone has to ask WHY Downtown Salisbury Inc. is so insistent upon having the Central Office Building downtown. Should we even listen to people duped into purchasing the rot and bat infested Empire Hotel? An even more pressing question is, why does the Central Office have to be on the 300 block of South Main? Especially in the light of its 38 feet of backfill, a water table that runs through it, and unabated groundwater contamination.
