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Trucks to be rerouted through Salem soon

SALEM–Signs are expected to go up next month for new truck routes which could mean less truck traffic coming through Salem.

“We’ll see some real benefits, especially in downtown,” Sustainable Opportunity Development Center Executive Director Michael Mancuso said recently.

The status of the project to reroute trucks was just one of the many topics covered by Mancuso during his report to city council’s Economic Development Committee. The verbal report covered some of the highlights of a written report detailing second quarter economic development activities of the SOD Center.

Mancuso handles economic development for the city through the SOD Center. Besides meeting regularly with Mayor John Berlin, he also keeps council updated quarterly on major projects, along with downtown redevelopment efforts, industrial development, residential development and commercial development, expansion/retention efforts, attraction efforts, promotion efforts, strategic planning efforts, the building and maintaining of partnerships and continued focuses and recommendations.

The report noted how more than 1,000 tractor trailers travel through downtown Salem on a daily basis and establishing a truck route for state Route 14 along the bypass should cut that number down. There’s also a hope that moving truck traffic to the northern bypass will create some economic development possibilities in that area where there’s already a tax increment financing zone established.

Some of the other topics discussed included getting a property near Cunningham and State actively back on the market for development and a new project for a shovel ready industrial site in the city. Details about the shovel ready site could not be disclosed at this point.

Mancuso said there’s a need to promote new tax incentive programs available through the city and promote the downtown. For recommendations, he said one of the most important is enforcement of the International Property Maintenance Code in the C-3 downtown business zone and enforcement of the new vacant building ordinance throughout the city.

Councilman Geoff Goll, who attended the meeting, questioned whether Mancuso was receiving weekly reports on IPMC enforcement or anything on the vacant building ordinance.

“We need to absolutely go after enforcement on these,” Mancuso said.

The vacant building ordinance requires owners of vacant properties to show that they’re being maintained or put on the market while the IPMC requires owners to keep up with maintenance on their buildings, such as fixing broken windows or addressing structural issues.

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