By Mark Wineka
mwineka@salisburypost.com
Salisbury City Council approved a conditional district overlay Tuesday for the 4.5-acre site that will become the city’s new Customer Service Center and headquarters for its fiber-optic utility.
At a public hearing, a neighboring resident expressed concerns about the increased traffic the center would generate.
And Salisbury businessman Robert Boone said he thought city officials were putting the facility in the wrong location.
Boone, who has been a City Council candidate in the past, also questioned why Salisbury was getting into the cable utility business when wireless communication might someday make it obsolete.
The 26,000-square-foot building will be constructed on South Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue at Harris Street.
The site is across the street from Lutheran Services for the Aging and between Vance and Calhoun streets.
The building will house a Customer Service Center, where residents can pay their water-sewer and cable utility bills in person. It also will include an employee wellness center, the city’s Information Technology Department, the cable utility’s offices and the “head-in” unit for the cable operation.
The property is currently vacant.
Boone said he thought a better location would be in the 300 block of South Main Street.
But Councilman Mark Lewis said of the Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue site that “I honestly can’t think of a better place.”
Lewis described the neighborhood as being in transition and recalled in previous planning discussions that property owners in that area “said loud and clear” they did not want to change to a residential zoning out of fear of losing value on their land.
When the city changed the name of Boundary Street to Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue, it also made a commitment to improving the street, Lewis said.
Some improvements have been occurring with the new Lutheran Services for the Aging facility, redevelopment of the Salisbury Sports Complex and improvements at the Rufty-Holmes Senior Center, Lewis said.
It’s exciting to be able to add a quality building on this empty lot, Lewis added.
Of a Main Street location for a Customer Service Center, Kennedy said there would be some parking issues. Kennedy and Mayor Susan Kluttz said the new city building will be good for the neighborhood off Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue.
Kluttz said Salisbury is the envy of many other cities because of the fiber-to-the-home plan it has.
Mayor Pro Tem Paul Woodson said he continues to hear a lot of excitement about the city’s $30 million cable utility project, which will take at least a year to get up and running.
Lewis said wireless technology, while adding a mobile component, will never take the place of fiber-optic cable, which has the capacity for moving mountains of information that wireless can’t.
A traffic analysis suggests the Customer Service Center will add 725 vehicles a day to Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue.
Woodson said he sees “very little traffic” on the street today and it should be able to absorb those extra vehicles.