Steve Mensing, Editor
♦ Some folks in Salisbury, N.C. possess large and convenient memory gaps about 329 S. Main as a potential spot for the Central Office. Commissioners Mike Caskey, Craig Pierce, and Jim Sides wisely turned down a loan for a postage stamp sized property, with no parking, and residual petroleum toxins in the water table. It was an easy decision to make. Anyone who cares about people, even school administrators, would find 329 S. Main Street unsuitable. The commissioners knew about vapor intrusion which closed down other school district properties in North Carolina and made for an unhealthy indoor environment.
Our commissioners would not be conned by those in Salisbury who wanted 329 S. Main as a new age “attractor field” for Economic Development tied to the decrepit Empire Hotel not opened to the public since 1963. Anyone touring the bat castle would quickly notice its interior needed a complete abatement and gutting. Knocking it down with bulldozers would be even better. Let those snookered banks suffer for their own lack of foresight.
I’m sure the current school system would much prefer the final choice for a new Central Office at 504 N. Main. Certainly its far more spacious than the postage stamp offered at 329 S. Main. 504 has plenty of parking while 329 S. Main had no actual parking, but a false promise of parking.
And as most readers recall the stamped paperwork at the register of deeds described the property as having “residual petroleum” and it was signed by the “mutually terminated” City Manager Doug Paris.
