Gillis Gilkerson to propose text amendment to bring development project Downtown
SALISBURY, Md. – City officials and community members are holding their breath, because Thursday, Planning and Zoning will decide if the downtown parking lot will be transformed into an apartment complex.
Developers at Gillis Gilkerson plan to try once again to bring the project to life, but Brad Gillis said they have to get through city planning and zoning first.
“What we are presenting is a text amendment. A text amendment changes 40 units an acre to 80 units an acre within the central business district,” Gillis said. “We believe that it’s beneficial to the city of Salisbury to have the text amendment so that we can implement the vision that we’ve been talking about as a community for several decades.”
But community members, Like Michael Lankford, are speaking out against the plan. He said there’s just not enough information available.
“It just feels like the arguments being put forth are of a low quality and a little bit misleading,” Lankford said. “They’re depending on speaking to audiences that generally don’t know what he’s talking about and he’s not making it more accessible, so it’s kind of like he just want people to trust his expertise.”
And others believe that if the apartment complex goes up, the number of available parking spots will go down. Holly Worthington worries about how it will affect small businesses downtown.
“We are already pretty congested with parking. You add a development, you add more patrons, you add all of that in an overscale project, it’s not going to be suitable for this area,” Worthington said.
But to that, Gillis said this:
“This project right now, while it’s planned, it still has some flexibility to it,” Gillis said. “We can accommodate people that have needs and have those opportunities and have those conversations, but for today, we have to lay the foundation for this development.”
The Planning and Zoning commission’s public meeting will be held Thursday at 1:30pm, at 125 North Division Street on the 3rd floor.
