High Point Unveils Plan to Make South Main Street Safer, More Walkable

A concept plan unveiled in early March aims to strip South Main Street in High Point down to its essentials, cutting the corridor from four vehicular lanes to two and reorienting it around people on foot rather than cars passing through.

The plan, called Plan South Main, covers S. Main Street between downtown High Point and the U.S. 29 interchange. It was commissioned by the Southwest Renewal Foundation with funding assistance from the city and lays out both short-term ideas, those achievable within two to 10 years, and long-term ambitions stretching 25 to 100 years into the future.

A central theme running through the plan is connectivity: making it physically easier for people on either side of S. Main to reach each other. Councilman Chris Williams pointed specifically to Guilford Technical Community College's High Point campus, where students and employees routinely face a difficult crossing just to reach retail businesses directly across the street.

"The idea of this project, it's multilayered. It's going to be practical to help the people access the retail across the road," Williams said. "Speaking as somebody who has worked downtown for close to 20 years, we want more walkability. You would get more foot traffic going to your retail across the road if it was safer."

Councilwoman Monica Peters highlighted a different group equally affected by the street's current configuration: Fairview Elementary School students who walk from the Macedonia neighborhood across S. Main to reach campus each day.

"It's hard to get students to school if it's not safe," Peters said.

Peters also welcomed the plan's vision for residential redevelopment along the corridor. "To be able to have mixed-use and downtown housing I think would be really great. So, I love this project," she said. The plan explicitly envisions residential uses and downtown housing as part of long-term redevelopment along S. Main.

Before any of the recommendations move forward, the city says additional detailed traffic engineering studies must be completed. That requirement means Plan South Main remains, for now, a vision document rather than a construction program, with no specific cost estimates or firm project schedules attached to its proposals.

The Southwest Renewal Foundation, which initiated and commissioned the plan, received funding assistance from High Point to complete the work. Whether additional public or private funding will support the required engineering studies or eventual implementation has not yet been determined.