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Booming downtown Southern Pines provides opportunities, sense of home

Community support and booming construction have helped historic Southern Pines continue to boom and grow.

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By
Sydney Franklin
, WRAL multiplatform producer
SOUTHERN PINES, N.C. — Southern Pines Mayor Carol Haney said before she came to the the town, she'd never had a home before.

"My father was career military," she explained. "When I got here, this was home, and I do feel like there's a tremendous sense of community and a great citizen involvement."

Town manager Reagan Parsons said an issue that many small towns in North Carolina face is absentee landowners, but that's not the case for Southern Pines.

"We have a lot of local owners of the buildings here in downtown and in many cases, they're owner-occupied," said Parsons.

Parsons added that having owner-occupied properties has helped during the coronavirus pandemic.

"In particularly difficult times, such as the pandemic, where we've read and heard of all the issues between landlord and tenants and trying to stay in places, owning their shop really goes a long way during some of those more difficult stretches," he said.

Town leaders have also helped business owners by easing some city ordinances.

"It's been amazing how our downtown merchants have survived and thrived during COVID, and the citizens supported," said Haney. "The town tried to make it easier for curbside pickups [and] encouraged the businesses downtown."

Visitors can check out where to eat, play and enjoy the day at Southern Pines Welcome Center on Broad Street.

"We did relax some of our food truck restrictions," she added. "We did relax some of those [restrictions] around special events and the ability to bring them."

Community support of the ordinances has also helped town leaders consider keeping some of those changes in place permanently.

Before the pandemic, the town had the ability for a sidewalk cafe and seating, but businesses hadn't applied for the permit. Now, more business owners are expressing interest in it.

"I think there were lessons learned for everybody through this challenge and, and hopefully we all come out the better for it in the end," said Parsons.

More places to live, work and enjoy outdoors

Parsons said that in the mid-2000s downtown started to see a transformation of work-live arrangements, where a business would be on the bottom floor and housing would be on the second and third floors of a building.

"We're seeing a lot of vertical construction that allows for a mixed-use type of approach," said Parsons.

The trend of development is continuing in Southern Pines, with the area greatly expanding throughout the years with the addition of breweries, restaurants and retail shops.

SoPies Pizza features hand-tossed, authentic New York Pizza in the heart of Southern Pines.

"It has just morphed into what it is now, I think, what might be another community that brings people to this area," said Haney.

The growth for the downtown area isn't over yet.

Haney said the town has recently purchased 157 acres of walking trails near downtown Southern Pines and has other projects in the work that can't be announced yet.

"There are people looking to do some pretty exciting things here, and the people who have done it," said Parsons.

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