Downtown Salisbury building owners left frustrated by downtown residential housing plan

SALISBURY, Md – A plan to bring mixed-used commercial and residential development to downtown Salisbury is leaving the owners of existing offices and retail spaces frustrated over what they call a lack of parking.

The plan from the City of Salisbury would see multiple downtown parking lots be converted into mixed-used developments featuring multiple floors of housing with parking being slated to come in the form of a yet-to-be-constructed garage.

Building Owners say the project would threaten to park crucial to their customers as they say there’s a ratio of parking to retail spaces that are owed to them under their leases and feel plans in the works would violate that.

The group plans to push back against the project at tomorrow’s zoning meeting being held at 1 pm.

“We have gotten a small group, maybe 25 or so folks, and business owners and building owners, and we’re just trying to fight back what we believe to be a single greatest threat to take out parking and really hurt the businesses down in downtown Salisbury,” said Thomas R Young Building Owner Randy Taylor.

Taylor says he is not against development but believes the interests of all stakeholders have not been considered in this plan.

“We need to have parking so that people can reach the businesses, can reach downtown, and it’s taking all of the surface parking for all of the businesses and retail and tenants that are already down here,” Taylor said adding “So we’re not quite sure why that’s a good thing for the [the project developer], because it’s certainly not good for the central business district.”

In a letter addressed to the City Taylor addressed language in the proposal calling lots 11 and 15 in Salisbury supplemental, challenging that definition and citing them as crucial for his property.

47ABC reached out to the City of Salisbury for comment and did not receive a response.