By Mark Wineka
Salisbury Post
Competitive Sports Properties, which operates a gym at 625 Corporate Circle off Julian Road, has plans to expand.
The city of Salisbury’s Technical Review Committee approved plans for a 10,000-square-foot addition to the existing gym Thursday.
The owner wants to add a metal building to match the gym already in place.
With the expansion, the gym will have almost 25,000 square feet.
The Technical Review Committee said the owner will be required to add three ornamental trees along a side property line.
Plans also call for the addition of juniper trees in the front of the new building. Shrubs will go between existing street trees in front.
In another matter, Technical Review Committee members heard that the installation of a grinder station and pump station in connection with the Rowan County Justice Center’s expansion could encroach on the decorative pattern in the pavement at the Freedman’s Memorial.
The infrastructure would go under North Church Street and include a lid that would disrupt the pattern, plans show.
Dan Mikkelson, land management and development director, said before the city objects to the placement of the grinder and pump stations, it should check with Salisbury-Rowan Utilities to determine whether it had made any commitments on the project.
Questions also surfaced on whether the infrastructure should be in the street at all.
Otherwise, Technical Review Committee members spent considerable time Thursday discussing sidewalks.
Zoning Administrator David Phillips asked the committee’s advice for the developer of a corner lot in Westcliffe.
The developer wants to build a house on the vacant lot. The question is, should he be required to install sidewalks, as outlined by the Land Development Ordinance?
None of the rest of the streets in Westcliffe, annexed a couple of years ago by Salisbury, has sidewalks.
The developer is looking at having to install 344 feet of sidewalk that would not immediately connect to any other sidewalk in the whole subdivision, Phillips noted.
Technical Review Committee members discussed what the Land Development Ordinance intends and how long sidewalks should exist without connecting to other sidewalks.
The discussion brought up an expression ó “sidewalks to nowhere” ó often heard by city planners in the past.
Salisbury recently has been using a program for circumstances where installation of sidewalks doesn’t necessarily make sense. The city asks the developer to make a payment in lieu of sidewalks in which the money goes toward building sidewalks in a more “pedestrian-based zone.”
Committee members decided to let the developer choose between building the sidewalks at the corner lot or contributing to the city sidewalk fund.
Contact Mark Wineka at 704-797-4263 or mwineka@salisburypost.com.