Penny Road on tap for growth

The developer of the project, Keystone Homes of Greensboro, is planning a third phase that’s proposed to include 112 apartments, as well as a separate project on adjacent property to the south that could support another 145 multifamily units.

To the north, developer Bunker Land Group of Charlotte, has received zoning approval for a mixed-use project at Penny Road and Wendover Avenue called Palladium South that’s designed for 288 apartments, as well as restaurants and a possible big-box store.

Penny Road, which runs from Greensboro Road to Wendover Avenue, is owned and maintained by the N.C. Department of Transportation.

The High Point Metropolitan Planning Organization, which sets regional transportation priorities, has advocated for Penny Road to be widened, but the proposal did not score high enough at the state level to compete for funding, said city Transportation Director Greg Venable.

“Right now, it’s a priority on our list, but it’s not on the DOT’s list yet,” he said.

The MPO supports widening the road to four lanes, similar to what the DOT did to Skeet Club Road, but this depends on traffic volume, safety hazards and other factors, he added.

In 2019, Penny Road near Wendover carried about 22,000 vehicles per day.

Venable said DOT traffic counts have dropped since the coronavirus pandemic, as more people worked from home and stayed off the roads.

“If the traffic numbers don’t justify a four-lane facility, then it’s hard for (DOT) to build that,” he said. “But that’s kind of what we’d like to see happen out there.”

The MPO submitted the Penny Road improvements to DOT as two project segments to see if that would make it more competitive, but so far, it hasn’t met the agency’s threshold for funding, he said.

Penny Road is fairly straight in sections, but less so on the southern end near Koonce City Lake.

“When you cross the lake, there’s a few curves up and down through there that are a little bit challenging from a sight-distance issue,” Venable said. “With all of these projects, safety is always an issue, and it helps anytime you can flatten those curves out.”

Some improvements to Penny Road will come once Palladium South develops and the city extends Samet Drive into the site.

“When we push the Samet Drive extension through, there will be some modifications made there, because we’re going to have dual lefts that will come off Samet Drive extension,” he said. “So they’re going to have to extend the southbound lanes on Penny to accommodate both left turns. So there will be some improvements there along Penny for that — not a very long way, just enough to handle that traffic coming off Samet Drive. Then it will push everybody back into one lane before you get down to Florence school and the Keystone development there.”

Besides Samet Drive, the only other signalized intersection on Penny Road between Greensboro Road and Wendover Avenue is at East Fork Road, which would be improved with turn lanes as an access point to the Keystone Homes project.

There are no plans at this point for additional traffic signals at any other intersection along the corridor.