For most of the last three decades, downtown High Point ran on a two-week clock. Twice a year, during the spring and fall furniture Market, roughly 75,000 buyers and designers packed 11.5 million square feet of showroom space and pumped an estimated $6 billion into the local economy. Then the trucks left, the showroom lights went dark, and the sidewalks emptied out until the next Market rolled around. That was the deal for a long time: High Point built its downtown to impress the world twice a year and didn't worry too much about what happened the other fifty weeks.
That deal is over. Walk through downtown on an ordinary Tuesday now and you'll find a coffee bar inside a converted hosiery mill, a professional soccer team drawing crowds to a stadium built for baseball, a food hall that didn't exist five years ago, and a park with a lazy river that residents actually use. None of these things arrived at once, and none of them alone would have changed the pattern. Together, they did.
The Money Behind the Shift
If you want to understand why downtown feels different, look at where the dollars went and what came out the other side.
| Project | Investment | What It Added |
|---|---|---|
| Congdon Yards | More than $40 million from the Congdon Foundation | Coworking space, a makerspace, a coffee bar, and fine dining inside the old Adams-Millis Hosiery Mill |
| Truist Point and the surrounding Catalyst district | Almost $70 million in city funds plus more than $65 million in private investment | A multi-use stadium, a food hall, and the start of a residential and retail corridor |
| High Point City Lake Park | $23.1 million | A rebuilt aquatic center, a new pedestrian bridge, and a renovated community event space |
Three separate projects, three separate funding sources, and one shared outcome: a downtown with something to do on a weeknight that has nothing to do with furniture.
A Mill Building Full of People Who Aren't Buying Furniture
Congdon Yards sits inside a building that used to make hosiery. The Congdon Foundation bought the old Adams-Millis mill in 2018 and has since put more than $40 million into turning it into what locals call a third place, somewhere to go that isn't home or work. The campus now includes Plant 7 and The Factory for office tenants, The Commons for coworking and casual meetings, The Generator for small-scale furniture and metalwork fabrication, and Earl's Landing for a sit-down dinner. The public café inside The Commons, Lil's Coffee Bar, is open to anyone walking in off the street, not just tenants.
That mix has pulled in more than 300 full-time employees and 50 tenants, according to the Congdon Foundation, ranging from interior design firms to nonprofits to a chapter of Guilford Technical Community College's Small Business Center. Rachel Collins, CEO of Business High Point, described the shift in developer behavior that made this possible in comments shared by the Congdon Foundation: "For the first time, I'm seeing all the private developers sitting down and talking." That coordination is the part a drive-by tour won't show you, but it's the reason Congdon Yards, Truist Point, and the food hall next door all opened within a few years of each other instead of competing for the same handful of downtown blocks.
The Ballpark That Built a Neighborhood Around It
Truist Point opened in 2019 as home field for the High Point Rockers, and the stadium now also hosts Carolina Core FC, the city's professional soccer club. On its own, a stadium only fills up on game nights. What actually changed the neighborhood is what got built around it.
Stock+Grain Assembly, an entertainment and food hall, opened just outside the stadium and gave people a reason to arrive early or stay late on game nights. Fox & Rocks followed as a bar and retail shop selling menswear and gifts, described by the city's tourism office as the newest addition to the Downtown Social District. And Smitty and Pearl's, a dining and entertainment complex with three restaurants built around seafood and cocktails plus a duckpin bowling alley and a virtual reality arcade, is under construction now and slated to open in late 2026.
Each of these is a small business decision on its own. Stacked together over five years within a few blocks of each other, they turn a stadium district into a place where a Tuesday night out doesn't require a game on the schedule at all.
The Lake Got Its Second Act
High Point City Lake Park has been a gathering place since the 1930s, but by 2017 the aging pool and gymnasium needed more than patchwork repairs. The city's $23.1 million renovation replaced the old pool with a 50-meter competition pool, added a zero-depth splash pad that transitions into a lazy river and vortex, and rebuilt the gymnasium into a community event space with locker rooms that actually work for families. A new pedestrian bridge across the lake now connects the park directly to the Piedmont Environmental Center and the High Point and Bicentennial Greenways trail network, so a walk that used to require a car now starts at the park entrance.
The numbers from the first season after reopening tell you the demand was already there and waiting. Pool visitation jumped from 20,000 visitors before the renovation to 50,000 in its first full season, with 131 private rentals and 76 hosted events in that same summer, according to the engineering firm that managed the project. If you haven't made it out this year, the aquatic center's final weekends of the season run through Labor Day, September 7, before it closes for the year.
What's Actually on the Calendar Right Now
The clearest proof that this isn't a one-time push is the calendar itself. This isn't a single festival weekend built to generate headlines. It's a rotation that keeps showing up:
- Tuesday, August 25 — High Point Rockers vs. Lexington Legends at Truist Point, first pitch 6:35 p.m.
- Friday, August 28 — Reel Nights outdoor movie screening of "Over the Hedge" at Oak Hollow Marina, 7:30 p.m.
- Saturday, August 29 — Savor High Point: Around the World in a Bite, a food festival at 220 E. Commerce Ave., starting 2 p.m.
- Friday, September 11 — High Point Rockers vs. Gastonia Ghost Peppers at Truist Point.
- Saturday, September 12 — Day in the Park Arts Festival at High Point City Lake Park, starting at noon.
None of these require a special occasion. They're just what a normal weekend downtown looks like now, and the city's tourism office keeps a running calendar if you want to see what else is added as the fall season fills in.
What the Furniture Market Never Gave Downtown
The furniture Market made High Point famous and it still matters enormously to the local economy. But a $6 billion twice-a-year event was never going to give residents a reason to walk downtown in July. What changed wasn't the Market. It was a decade of separate investors, from the Congdon family to the city council to the Parks and Recreation department, deciding to build for the other fifty weeks instead of just the two.
That's a different kind of downtown than High Point has had in a generation, and it's one that keeps adding to itself: Smitty and Pearl's isn't open yet, which means there's still more coming.
If you're already living in High Point, you've probably felt some of this shift without connecting all the pieces. If you're weighing whether this city fits how you want to spend your weekends, Pam Robbins has spent years watching these neighborhoods change in real time and can walk you through what's actually within reach in today's market. You can also browse current High Point homes for sale to see what's available right now. Either way, reach out to schedule a consultation and we'll talk through what fits your life here.
