HIGHWAY TO HEALING: Greensboro, local universities and private developers have pumped half a billion dollars into reviving one of the city's key entry ways.

• Author: Tosczak, Mark

The story of Greensboro has parallels to the story of its main thoroughfare, Gate City Boulevard, which runs 6.5 miles from west of Four Seasons Town Centre mall through neighborhoods just south of downtown then out to Interstate 85. The mall's opening in 1975 and the nearby Greensboro Convention Center made that chunk of road one of the state's hottest real-estate zones, creating a magnet for shoppers, diners and visitors from across North Carolina.

By the mid-1990s, the bloom was off the rose. Investment started shifting to Friendly Center and other parts of town, leaving the once-bustling road lined with run-down retail shops and aging industrial facilities. Razor wire and chain-link fencing was a common sight. In July 2000, the local newspaper noted that around Four Seasons "entire blocks look seedy and timeworn. Several well-publicized killings and assaults shattered the peace in recent years. Drug deals go down in parking lots."

Local university, political and business leaders decided to act, realizing that the city can't thrive with such an essential area looking so bleak. With its textile industry shriveling from overseas competition and financial institutions consolidating elsewhere, the city's population has increased at about half the rate of Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham since 2010. Attracting major corporate expansions and relocations has proven difficult, prompting years of chatter over how to revitalize the city.

A key catalyst involved a rebranding in 2015: The historic names of High Point Road and Lee Street were dumped in favor of Gate City Boulevard. Meanwhile, the stretch has attracted more than a half-billion dollars of mostly public investment, including improved streetscapes, new academic buildings and dorms, retail space, and more.

"We have one of our biggest moneymakers on that street, which is the Greensboro Coliseum [Complex] and the Aquatic Center, where we have people, literally from all over the world, coming to those facilities," Mayor Nancy Vaughan says. "We don't want them to be afraid to venture away from the coliseum."

It remains more of a facelift than a total transformation. "I guess you could call it transformed [compared] to what it was, but it still has a long way to go," says Andy Zimmerman, a Greensboro developer who is renovating a century-old Blue Bell jeans factory that sits at the corner of Gate City Boulevard and South Elm Street in downtown. Making it easier to walk, bike and drive between...