Downtown Salisbury building owners hire lawyer to press parking concerns at next planning and zoning meeting

SALISBURY, Md – Owners of Downtown Salisbury businesses are continuing their efforts to block a housing development slated to take over parking lots in downtown Salisbury, that they say threatens access to their lots.

Randy Taylor, owner of the Thomas R Young building in Salisbury tells 47ABC at the July Planning and Zoning meetings, the plan to turn several of the city’s lots into dense housing units was moved forward into the appeal stage.

They say they have retained a lawyer to represent their interest and believe the city failed to go through the proper process to approve the bid.

“They did move it forward, however, they did it in the context of recognizing that there’s a parking problem and that they wanted us as groups to work together,” Taylor said adding “We are less confident that that method is going to work and we’re focusing more on the process, which we think was irregular and also the fact that the city left the door open by eliminating the parking standard,” Randy Taylor said.

Taylor said when the lots were purchased the buildings were guaranteed a proportional amount of parking, one the current use plan violates.

“Historically, the central business district has always been dependent upon the city parking and what they did a couple of years ago is eliminated. That parking standard. Well, that was before they were on the infill construction, which is what this is. So you can’t have both you can’t have infill construction over the existing parking and have no parking standard,” he said.

He says his group of property owners hopes to raise these concerns at the next planning and zoning meeting.