Showplace West sale clears path for 143 downtown apartments, shops

A $300,000 sale has put one of downtown High Point’s most visible empty buildings on track for a major second act, with plans for 143 market-rate apartments and two commercial spaces at 101 S. Main St.

The buyer is LBD Investments, the Richmond, Virginia, firm led by Randy Cosby and Andrew Hampton. The company closed on Showplace West, also known as One Plaza Center, in mid-April and has renamed the project Elwood on Main. The eight-story concrete office building, completed in 1971 and totaling about 135,000 square feet, has stood vacant since 2012 on a roughly .56-acre parcel facing East High Avenue between South Main Street and South Wrenn Street.

The gap between the sale price and the redevelopment cost shows how difficult downtown adaptive reuse can be. Multiple reports place the total investment above $30 million, a far larger sum than the property’s $300,000 purchase price. International Market Centers bought the building in 2011 for about $1.49 million and later donated it to Downtown High Point in 2019, leaving the city with a prominent but aging asset in the middle of the central business district.

That asset carries unusual preservation weight. In April 2024, One Plaza Center was listed individually on the National Register of Historic Places, making it North Carolina’s first National Register-listed building from the 1970s. State preservation records describe the property as significant for community planning and development under Criterion A and for architecture under Criterion C, a nod to both its role in High Point’s urban renewal era and its Brutalist design.

For downtown, the practical question is whether the project can do more than fill a vacant shell. Downtown High Point officials have repeatedly said housing is missing in the city center, and earlier planning tied the building to roughly 9,000 square feet of commercial space on the Main Street and Wrenn Street corners. If those apartments and storefronts are delivered, the project could add residents, evening activity, and built-in customers for nearby restaurants and shops that now rely heavily on market weeks and special events.

The sale itself suggests the effort has moved beyond speculation. Preservation approval in 2025 cleared a major hurdle for rehabilitation tax credits, and reports now say the work has entered the construction phase. For a building many residents still remember as the former First Citizens Bank, Noble’s restaurant, or the landmark with the pyramid out front, the deal marks the clearest sign yet that downtown High Point is trying to turn one of its longest-vacant addresses into a lived-in corner of Main Street.