SALISBURY — The Rowan County Board of Commissioners planning retreat was the first event ever held in the newly-renovated Rowan Community Center, and much of the retreat focused on the former Salisbury mall, whether the discussion focused on the fee schedule for the events center or which departments should be moved into the remaining empty space.

The Rowan Community Center, formerly the West End Plaza, has been the subject of discussion and renovations for years after the county bought the mall in 2013. Those discussions have begun to come to fruition, as the events center opened up and the construction is underway on the Rowan County Health Department and the agricultural center.

The discussion during the retreat on Monday primarily focused on which departments the county should look into moving into the RCC. County Manager Aaron Church presented five departments that commissioners said needed the extra space provided by the RCC, which included planning and development, tax assessor and collections, building inspections, the register of deeds and environmental health.

Church also used rough estimates of the amount of space the departments would need in the future to determine that if all five departments were moved, the county could renovate the former JCPenney store into a one-stop shop for county departments instead of them being spread across multiple buildings.

“That was the whole concept when we bought the West End Plaza, if you need any county offices, you can go to one place and it’s all right there,” said Commissioner Craig Pierce.

The county is currently in a space crunch with its various departments, and the commissioners and county staff floated various ideas and projects during the planning retreat to help alleviate it. Five buildings were the center of the discussion, the RCC, the Department of Social Services building, the former K&W Cafeteria building, the historic Crawford Building and the county office building located at 402 N. Main St.

One of the major plans discussed was allowing DSS to take over the entirety of the building on East Innes Street once the Health Department moves into the RCC.

“Right now, DSS does not have enough offices for their employees, but a lot of them are working remotely and we approved that specially because they don’t have enough space. So, I imagine the minute the health department moves out here (DSS) will immediately start taking over the space,” said Church.

The Crawford Building has been floated in the past as a solution to the Rowan County Sheriff’s Office’s space issues, but the commissioners showed some trepidation on Monday due to the building’s historical status and the costs associated with renovating it. Church presented proposals for the upcoming budget, which included a $1.2 million increase to the Crawford renovations, bringing the total to a potential $6 million. 

Chairman Greg Edds said that instead of renovating the Crawford Building, the sheriff’s office could take over space that is vacated at 402 N. Main St. when the departments there, such as planning and the register of deeds, move to the RCC.

No decisions were made at the meeting, but Church received consensus from the commissioners to ask ADW Architects, the engineering firm handling the RCC project, to look into the available space and potential designs for renovations.

During the meeting, the commissioners also received an early look at the fee schedule for renting the RCC. Highlights included different rates for weekends vs. weekdays, lowered rates for nonprofits and “IT and (audio-visual) items that most other facilities are trying to catch up to,” said Events Center Manager Megan Simpson.

Church said that the fee schedule would be presented to the commissioners for official approval at the first meeting in March.

In other news from the planning retreat:

• The commissioners heard an early overview of potential projects for the upcoming budget. Church said that the county can expect to see a smaller budget than the prior year due to a decrease in capital expenditures. The early budget total Church showed had the county’s budget at approximately $210 million, down from the prior year’s approximately $238 million.
• Planning and Development Director Ed Muire presented a proposal for the county to begin development on a Unified Development Ordinance, which would combine all of the county’s current development ordinances into a single document. The county currently has seven different land use plans addressing different areas of the country and types of development, and Muire said that combining all of those and updating them would remove redundancies and provide more consistency. The UDO would cost the county $180,000, which Muire said could be funded through the planning department’s revenues.
• The commissioners were asked to prioritize future capital projects from a list of 16 potential projects presented by Church. The projects totaled approximately $13 million, with some of the more expensive options being the upfit of the main concourse of RCC at $3.8 million, a new train for Dan Nicholas Park at $1.2 million, the upfit of the outside of the former JCPenney at $1.87 million and the expansion of the Board of Elections space at $750,000.