English: Street in downtown Salisbury, North Carolina, USA. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Steve Mensing, Editor
♦In 2010 Salisbury’s city council approved a plan called the 20/20 Downtown Master Plan. It was a spinoff of the downtown plan within “Completion and Connection: A 10 year Master Plan Growing the Visitor Economy in Salisbury-Rowan County, North Carolina”. ”Completion and Connection” produced little tangible results in Salisbury as a drive around the Main Street and downtown areas will show. None of the major “build it and they will come projects” got off the ground. The convention center was wisely deep-sixed by city council. The bike plan drew public ire and sputtered. The decaying Empire Hotel, having shut its doors in 1963, was last a flop house. No longer considered hotel material due to the city’s low hotel occupancy rate and the fact that few people travel to Main Street, the Empire waits and waits for someone to toss money at it. If someone purchases or leases it, they are getting a shell that requires its rotted interior be gutted and millions spent on its rehab. The Empire appears to have run out of time with a sheriff’s sale likely in its future.
The Empire Hotel may well spell the ruin of Downtown Salisbury Inc. who made a bad gamble on the hotel several years ago and has found little interest to date. The hapless Empire’s stock went down even further since the downtown area became a backlit question mark. If county government offices take up residence in the newly purchased Salisbury Mall–what impact will it have on the already woeful downtown economy and the growing run of vacancies?
Only several very peripheral targets of the initial Downtown Master Plan ever came to fruition. The main goals died for a lack of public interest, a downhill economy, and a lack of money.
Today’s new version, the 20/20 Downtown Master Plan, remains stuck on the launching pad, never getting traction or financial support. It’s planning lacked plasticity to alter course with a huge array of obstacles growing like an overnight redwood forest. Most agree its time to press in a new direction.
Downtown Master Plans require money–plenty of it especially for the 20/20 Downtown Master Plan. These funding obstacles became mammoth since its 2010 approval by Salisbury’s City Council:
• The end of forced annexation. Since the legislature ended Salisbury’s greedy “forcing in” and looting of unincorporated neighborhoods, Salisbury can no longer lard its pockets for its pet projects. That well is dry.
• Salisbury’s poverty now said to be above 22.4%. The more poor–the less of a tax base and the more stress placed on city systems. Poverty looks to snowball over the next 5 years with jobs shrinking and few businesses seeking to locate here. The snowball could well shape up as an avalanche.
• The towering obstacles to economic growth. Undeniable roadblocks: (1) High per capita crime according to the FBI databases. Our streets are unsafe. (2) Substandard education within the city’s limits, according the composite scores in the new North Carolina READY report card. (3) Steady urban flight effects our tax base and schools. (4) Fibrant’s crushing weight on the city’s pale financial core.
• The negative cascade effect of the Fibrant debacle on the city’s finances, city services, and its ability fund projects. Fibrant’s immense debt weighs heavily on the city and its ability to provide needed city services. Funding major projects is way beyond the city’s reach. The city is wobbling badly from the results of its fiber optic network.
• Rowan County’s 2012 rebellion against the city of Salisbury’s Manchurian candidates for the county commission. The county voted in Craig Pierce and Mike Caskey for county commission to stifle Salisbury’s parasitism for their pet projects. Voting together, commissioners Jim Sides, Craig Pierce, and Mike Caskey rejected the over-priced Taj Mahal and its undersized property at 329 S. Main. The 38 feet of mushy backfill with the water table running through it, is too small a property to suit future expansion, and a parking area promised similtaneously to both the schools and to Integro created disinterest among our county commissioners. The school system can do far better elsewhere.
• Urban flight and the dying out of old Salisbury money. The tax base is diminishing with the vacancies, for sale signs, and natural attrition. The outflow of money and talent increases monthly. Salisbury lacks jobs and a stable future.
• In the not too distant future Salisbury may have its water wings clipped by the legislature when they end municipalities raiding their enterprise funds and cheating their water and sewer bill payers of lower utility rates. Fibrant’s multi-million dollar guzzling from Salisbury’s as well as nearby municipalities water and sewer funds could be shut down. More weight on Salisbury’s spent financial core. Water systems may be turned over to the county which would be a boon to utility payers.
The evidence of the Downtown Master Plan’s nose dive since 2010:
• The Convention Center never passed muster with city council. Few people could picture Salisbury as a convention draw and any entertainment being showcased there would likely clash with Salisbury’s alleged “character”.
• While the city’s larger projects never got wheels under them, Salisbury’s low budget Art’s District sustained itself on a diet of non profit funding. While not making much of a blip on the economic radar screen, it offers fringe theater, community theater, children’s theater, comedy, music, and art in a small urban arts ghetto. Our city possesses some excellent visual artists. The art’s district has grown subtly as an attraction in an area starving for arts and to some degree the arts district stems the flow of arts leakage to larger venues like Charlotte and Winston.
Art districts are easy to nourish and cost little money. They can sprout like roach colonies. Like roaches, arts districts can breed anywhere especially in warehouses. We have decent fringe theater and amateur community theater. Professional theater hasn’t taken hold yet.
• With the breakdown of city services this past spring and summer, the city’s properties became overgrown with weeds and grass. The area streets and sidewalks became threadbare, defeating one of the city’s beautification goals.
• The city’s promise of parking was a no show. Parking is a large problem for both merchants and drivers.
What practical plans and goals can be made for Downtown Salisbury’s facelift? They require a plan relying on little money to implement:
• Perhaps they might take a page or two from Detroit’s or Stockton’s “Come Back Playbook”. Detroit flourishes again in very tiny, but energized pockets. They have created urban farming to help feed neighborhoods without supermarkets or grocery stores. Stockton’s police force and fire department ranks were decimated by a lack of city funding. Their overworked police and fire departments were assisted by Guardian Angels, strong town watches, and volunteerism.
• Adding attractions to the Main Street and downtown areas. Restaurants already here are a plus. More can be added. Can small boutique chain stores be added to the Main Street area without being blocked by codes, regulations, and an army of NIMBY’s and “Shop Locals”?
• The concept of a business incubator would be a worthy addition especially with plenty of available space down at the new Rowan County Government Plaza. Originally suggested in the ”Completion and Connection” Master Plan, a business incubator would help grow businesses for the business hungry downtown area.
