RFP Staff
♦ Sadly the Jerky Station announced their closing after a brief 10 month run on 107 S. Main Street in Downtown Salisbury. Opened from June 2015 until now, this specialty jerky shop sold a wide-variety of tasty jerkies–an outstanding source of high protein. All is not glum. The Jerky Station, operated by Brad McDaniel and his father Delmar from Rowan County, will be reopening their shop in Downtown Boone, N.C. a state university town with outstanding foot traffic. Outstanding foot traffic is something lacking in ghostly Downtown Salisbury with its numerous vacant storefronts and its blighted South Main Badlands.
The Jerky Station stay of about 10 months Downtown Salisbury is about average for newcomer shops and restaurants no matter how excellent they are. Since the very poor holiday shopping season, Belissima, Uncle Bucks, Romo’s Pizzaria, Dead Eds, O.K. Wigs, Firehouse Brew Pit, and others turned off the lights. At this writing at least 4-5 shops and restaurants are said to be folding their tents.
Why do so many newcomer shops and restaurants close after a short run in Downtown Salisbury?
• Little foot and automobile traffic.
• The highest Downtown Tax in all of North Carolina in the notorious Municipal Service District. This excessive tax supports a horrific investment in the decrepit Empire Hotel in the blighted South Main badlands. This toxic dump needs demolishing. It’s costs for abatement and gutting would make any investment and development prohibitive. The Empire Hotel was last opened as a flophouse in 1963 sure to scare most developers off. Solution: Demolish it and put up a 2-tiered parking lot.
• Little spendable income in Salisbury making retail and restaurants fall into the survival mode to scrap for very limited dollars.
• Muggings, the shooting near “Go Burrito”, the Waffle House window getting shot out, and indecent exposure activity by the Wells Fargo mural make Downtown scary especially during the night with an understaffed Police Department. The side streets in Downtown Salisbury can be dangerous during even daylight hours. How many women get “punched out” on Downtown streets or have their purses snatched?
• Historic codes add to the high cost of Downtown retail and eateries.
• Pilferage in Downtown stores cuts down on profits. Eat and skip the bill is all too common in Downtown eateries.
• The rents of many Downtown buildings excessively raising the costs of doing business.
• Lack of parking spaces in the Downtown make it uninviting.
• The lack of many attractions and draws. Rowan and Salisbury folks do much shopping on the internet and in large chain stores beyond Rowan’s borders.
• Middle and upper income people are moving away.
Brad, Owner of the Jerky Station, posted this goodbye on Facebook Thursday:
“It is true. We are moving to Boone to 742 W. King Street. We originally started in Salisbury because we are from Salisbury and it was much simpler to set up. We hoped that we could keep Salisbury as a location, but there are two important factors that will not make this possible.
I need to preface this by letting you know that none of this is intended to be a complaint and I’m just letting you know the facts of our experience. Mainly because I’m reading what I’m typing here and I am sounding really whiny haha. Also, I love the people of Salisbury and the most difficult part of this process is leaving behind the people who supported us with all the joy and confidence in the world.
The important factors that I spoke of earlier are that the operating costs are relatively high and that there is not enough foot traffic to offset them for us. We barely turned a profit in December and that was the store operating at it’s max potential. In comparison, the Boone store’s operating costs will be literally half of what they were in Salisbury. Also, foot traffic on King Street is substantially higher. I’d say the amount of people out on a Friday Night Out (downtown Salisbury events) is comparable to a standard day in Boone in terms of foot traffic. I have ideas about how downtown Salisbury could increase revenue, but this post is getting too long (basically there needs to be more housing in the downtown area)…”
