By Mark Wineka
mark.wineka@salisburypost.com

GRANITE QUARRY — A S.C. consulting firm told Granite Quarry’s Revitalization Team it can deliver a master plan for the town within a six-month time frame, beginning as soon as March.

“From start to finish, we’re looking at a process that starts with you and ends with you,” said Tee Coker, an urban planner with Arnett Muldrow & Associates of Greenville, S.C.

The Revitalization Team, town board members, town planners and residents filled Town Hall’s meeting room Monday evening to hear the Arnett/Muldrow proposal. Arnett Muldrow has priced its services at $35,000 with travel and expenses included.

Mayor Bill Feather told those in attendance Monday the Board of Aldermen has made a decision to move forward with the consultants. What’s left is to negotiate a final price and look to the business community to help offset the costs, he said.

“A lot of what he’s talking about are things we want to do,” Feather added.

Coker outlined how the consultants would use community input, branding and marketing, physical planning and project implementation strategies to make a revitalization plan work.

“We don’t want to set you up for failure,” Coke said. “.. This might be a 20-year plan.”

Arnett Muldrow & Associates has worked with more than 400 communities in 35 states on urban planning, economic development and historic preservation projects.

Team members working in Granite Quarry will include Coker, serving as project manager; Shawn Terpack, branding and marketing; Randy Wilson, owner of Community Design Solutions; and Andy Kalback, a designer with Mahan Rykiel Associates of Baltimore.

Wilson specializes in charrette (design workshops) and photo renderings, which take photographs of existing properties and show digitally how they could be improved. Kalback specializes in landscape architecture and urban design.

Aaron Arnett, one of the principals of the planning firm, was employed four-and-a-half years for the city of Salisbury as a planner. Arnett Muldrow has worked on six Salisbury projects over 12 years.

Coker said the last thing his firm wants to do is give the town a plan that sits on the shelf. Part of the process will include an “implementation workshop,” which spells out what people will be responsible for getting specific pieces of the master plan done.

As far as community input goes, Coker promised there would be a steering committee, roundtable and one-on-one interviews, three public meetings, online surveys and merchant zip-code surveys.

“Ideally, we would be engaging well over 1,000 people,” Coker said.

Merchants will be asked to participate in a weeklong exercise in which they record the zipcodes of their customers. It will help the planners get an accurate handle on retail activity and where the people are coming from at present, Coker said. The planning firm also will be digging into the retail demographics, household incomes and customer preferences and looking at the inflow and outflow of dollars.

Coker said the master plan translates that information into objectives and identifies what the economic development opportunities are. In turn, that feeds into physical planning and identifying suitable locations for specific types of businesses Granite Quarry should have, Coker said.

Without a branding and marketing component, Coker said, a revitalization plan would be like having a party without sending out the invitations. Arnett Muldrow will come up with graphics and marketing concepts to help Granite Quarry tells its story, he said.

The ultimate plan, Coker added, leaves the town’s stakeholders with clear marching orders for one another.

Feather reiterated it will be a community plan, not a town board plan. “We truly need the town’s input,” he said.

Everything happening in Granite Quarry to this point has been done piecemeal, Feather added, and the town needs this kind of master plan to pull it all together.

Mayor Pro Tem Jim LaFevers said once Granite Quarry has a plan, it can then put priorities on the different pieces.

Arnett Muldrow was the planning firm which helped Travelers Rest, S.C., revitalize its central business district. Members of the Granite Quarry Revitalization Team took a field trip to Travelers Rest last summer. Paul Fisher, chairman of F&M Bank, made that trip, and he noted that 15 years ago Travelers Rest had no vision.

“If something looked impossible, that was impossible,” Fisher said. But the town followed a plan that in 10 to 12 years turned things around. A key ingredient was the conversion of an abandoned rail line into the Swamp Rabbit Trail. Walkers and bicyclists use that trail, which goes all the way to Greenville, and businesses in Travelers Rest also have connected to it.

Fisher said Granite Quarry has more going for it than Travelers Rest did when it set out on a plan. In the recent past, Granite Quarry has added a pharmacy, new medical offices, a Family Dollar and Granite Lake Park. The highway connecting Granite Quarry to Salisbury also is the nicest in any direction, Fisher added.

“We can do it here,” he said. “We have so much more to start with than they ever thought about. … We have tremendous assets, and all it’s going to take is getting together and building a plan.”

Members of the audience were quick to point to some of the assets Granite Quarry has, including the Michael Braun House, which Fisher tabbed as gthe oldest surviving house between Raleigh and the Tennessee border; old quarries; an active rail line; and close proximity to Dunn’s Mountain.

While the active rail line might be seen as a negative, William Ketchie said, it could be made a positive, if the town could manage a link for passenger excursion trains with the N.C. Transportation Museum in Spencer.

Garry Mattingly, chairman of the Revitalization Team, said the group’s goal from the beginning has been to make Granite Quarry a destination spot and not a drive-through on U.S. 52.

Members of the audience also brought up some concerns. Dennis Sipp wondered what would be the future of the shopping center on the north side of town now that the Fred’s store has gone out of business.

Fisher said a crucial piece of property is the former East Side grocery and service station, which is now abandoned. Whatever happens there will be critical and, if done correctly, could give energy to the rest of Granite Quarry, Fisher said.

Jay Proctor expressed concerns about how a master plan, with all the physical changes it could generate, might affect pedestrians, motorists, parking, sidewalks, traffic lights and noise in residential areas.

“Downtown is a very restricted area, as far as the size of it,” Proctor said.

Fisher expressed one other concern — the snail’s pace at which government can sometimes move.

“I would like the town to pick up speed and move forward,” he said.

Contact Mark Wineka at 704-797-4263.