By Noelle Edwards
nedwards@salisburypost.com
The Salisbury Planning Board on Tuesday sent to committee a plan to incorporate bicyclists into the city’s infrastructure.
The Planning Board wasn’t comfortable making a recommendation until the issue was examined more closely, Senior Planner Preston Mitchell said.
The plan has been in the works since it was suggested in a Salisbury City Council meeting in 2001.
Most recently, the board held a public hearing on the issue in July.
The committee examining the bike plan is chaired by Maggie Blackwell and includes Valarie Stewart, Albert Stout and Dick Huffman.
The full draft of the bike plan is at www.salisburync.gov/planningboard/bikeplan.html
The Planning Board also made a provisional recommendation Tuesday to accept some changes to the site plan for the Salisbury Customer Service Center.
The Customer Service Center is planned for a 4.5-acre site at Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue and Harris Street to house the city’s Fiber to the Home operation, an Information Technology Services Division and a customer service center for Salisbury-Rowan Utilities and the cable system.
The changes the board recommended include posting a sign directing people to bicylcle parking, eliminating barbed wire along the street and screening mechanical units with plants.
The recommendation was provisional because it gave city staff authority to work with the project’s designer to address some of the technical issues in the drawings and notes in the plan, Mitchell said.
The Planning Board also sent to committee two rezoning requests, both on Statesville Boulevard. The two properties are adjacent and make up a total of 48 acres of land.
The properties are in a Rural Residential district. The request is to rezone the properties as Residential Mixed-Use.
Preston said given the size of the properties and the difference in the current zoning versus the requested zoning, the board wanted to study the issue further.