Planning board agendas may be lighter this spring than during past years, but town officials say the economy has not kept businesses from coming to the border community.

“There are signs of life in the economy here locally. There are projects coming before the planning board,” said Ross Moldoff, Salem’s planning director. “People are doing things. There is development activity.”

In February, Moldoff reported an unusually light workload, even during the already normally slow season of the year for his department. He was handling fewer phone calls and fewer people were dropping by his office. At the time, Moldoff said it would be interesting to see whether that trend continued into the spring, when activity within the department traditionally begins to pick up.

Officials got an added surprise toward the end of that month when plans that had been in the works for over a year to redevelop the Coca-Cola plant suddenly fell through. The proposal, which included a coffee shop and restaurant, died after the lead tenant, a CVS Pharmacy, pulled out.

Now, as the days become warmer and lengthen, Moldoff is seeing a turnaround in business.

“There is still activity is out there. It’s not dead by any means,” he said. “There is enough activity. I’m getting phone calls and people are making appointments. Sometimes it’s small projects and sometimes it’s big projects.”

The construction of two new pharmacies in town have been proposed, one near the border with Methuen, Mass., and the other on the far end of Route 28 near the border with neighboring Windham. A newly proposed supermarket and pharmacy on Route 97 has also gained approval from the town Zoning Board and is headed before the Planning Board.

The demolition and redevelopment of the DeMoulas Supermarket, also on Route 28, was also recently approved by the planning board and construction is set to start on the Lowe’s project in coming weeks, according to Moldoff. Part of what has kept Salem attractive to commercial development is its location directly across the border from Massachusetts, he said.

“One of the things we have always known, is that Salem is the first community over the border. That there is no sales or income tax is always an advantage to Salem when people are looking to open up a business or do something different,” Moldoff said.

While James Keller, chairman of the Planning Board, has noticed a dip in the amount of business his board handled in comparison to last year, he said the community had remained attractive to outside companies despite the economic downturn.

He pointed to Salem’s geographical location as one such advantage as well.

“It’s fair to say it’s slowed down. There is very little activity on the residential side of thing and the commercial activity is strong, but I would certainly categorize it as less than last year,” Keller said. “Salem continues to benefit from it’s location and with its vibrant business and commercial area, it’s quite appealing.”