Poinsett Highway in Travelers Rest: What's New Downtown

When did a coffee run on North Poinsett Highway last feel like a trip downtown, and not a detour around one?

The answer for the past couple of years would have been "not lately." That changed this week. On Thursday, October 1, the City of Travelers Rest held a grand reopening to mark the end of the Poinsett Highway improvement project. City officials put the cost at more than $9 million. City Administrator Shannon Herman described the goal plainly. "This was really the opportunity to move away from a linear one street, Main Street, into more of a geometric central business district and so this is it. We're here," she told WSPA.

That quote explains the whole project. The road work was built to turn Travelers Rest's downtown into more than one street.

What the City Actually Built

The City's project overview calls the Poinsett corridor "a key commercial hub" within the Central Business District. It covers the stretch between Main Street and State Highway 25. Here is what went into the ground:

• A rebuilt two-lane roadway with road resurfacing and stormwater management
• A 10-foot multimodal path for walking and biking on one side, and a 5-foot pedestrian sidewalk on the other
• Planting strips, widened ADA-compliant sidewalks and new streetlights
• Parking lots behind businesses
• A traffic and pedestrian signal at Tubbs Mountain Road and Poinsett Highway
• A diagonal crossing at Main Street and Center Street, plus a left-turn lane from Center Street onto North Main Street
• A pedestrian crosswalk from the parking lot across from Chicora Alley

When work began in 2024, Herman told WSPA the plan called for a grass buffer between the multimodal path and traffic. According to FOX Carolina, the funding plan drew on federal ARPA dollars from the COVID era and the City's capital-projects account.

Herman told WSPA that most of the hard work happened underground. "It took a year to get the road into condition. It was a lot of heavy lifting. It took a lot of deep digging, utility relocation, and movement and in particular stormwater improvements." That is why the street sat torn up for so long before it started to look finished.

Two Years of Detours, Measured at the Coffee Counter

The businesses on the corridor stayed open through all of it, and they felt it. In August, WYFF talked with staff at Leopard Forest Coffee Company and Chicora Alley Fire House about the detours. Emma Bradford, a longtime barista at Leopard Forest, described how much business they lost:

"I would say about 50% from even last year, where we were affected as well."

At Chicora Alley, co-owners Greg Gimpel and Smiley Miles said the construction followed right on the heels of the pandemic. "It was like a double whammy. COVID was hard enough, and it was amazing that we survived that. Then we started this, and it was like a repeat of COVID," Miles said.

Things turned around fast once traffic came back. Both lanes had reopened by the time WYFF ran its story. Bradford said, "This week we've already seen tremendous growth since both lanes of the road are now opened." The City's reopening event asked everyone to come back too. Its invitation thanked the corridor's businesses for their "patience and perseverance throughout construction."

The Corridor, by Address

Below is the street in address order, using the City's own dining and shopping guides.

Travelers Games is the newest name on the list. It opened right as construction was wrapping up. FOX Carolina previewed the lounge on August 21, describing it as a place built around play, and the shop advertised a grand opening for August 22, 2026. Its website still shows a "coming soon" banner, but the lounge is open. A visitor's video recorded inside on September 11 and a community game night held there on September 28 both confirm it.

So a coffee shop, a game lounge, a gear shop and a bar sit within a few hundred address numbers of each other. With the parking now behind the buildings, the corridor can work as its own small downtown, separate from Main Street.

Where the New Crossings Tie It Together

The crossings are what connect the two streets into one downtown. The diagonal bicycle crossing at Main Street and Center Street lets cyclists get across the intersection in a single movement, while pedestrians keep using the marked crosswalks. The new crosswalk from the lot across from Chicora Alley serves people who park there and walk over. At the north end, the signal at Tubbs Mountain Road was designed to give drivers a safer, smoother way in and out of the corridor.

The City's winter update also included a separate fix for trail users on Main Street. Existing crosswalks were slated for repainting, and a new all-stop crosswalk was planned at McElhaney Road and Main Street near Sunrift Adventures. The City called it "a much safer crossing point for users of the Swamp Rabbit Trail." The new 10-foot multimodal path along Poinsett and the trail crossing on Main were planned together. Together they make walking or biking between the two streets an easier choice than driving and re-parking.

A Fall Calendar That Starts on Main and Can End on Poinsett

This is the first event season with the corridor fully open. Many of these events are downtown or at Trailblazer Park, so a stop on Poinsett for coffee before or a drink after is now an easy add.

1. Through October 24: Scarecrows on Main, themed "Stars, Stripes & Scarecrows – America 250," lines downtown starting today, October 3, with voting open through Saturday, October 24.
2. Thursdays, October 8, 15, 22 and 29: The Travelers Rest Farmers Market's Harvest Market runs 5:30 to 8 p.m. at Trailblazer Park, with live music, food trucks and 35-plus vendors. The October 29 market adds a kids' costume parade and trick-or-treating.
3. Saturday, October 17: The Fall Browse & Stroll Art Market sets up from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the downtown pocket parks and along the Swamp Rabbit Trail.
4. Saturday, October 31: Trailblazer Halloween Fest runs 2 to 8 p.m. at 235 Trailblazer Drive, with live music, trick-or-treating, pumpkin decorating, food and a costume parade.
5. Friday, November 6: The City's First Fridays: Movies in the Park series screens The Wild Robot at Trailblazer Park.
6. Sunday, November 8: The November Trailblazer Market brings 50-plus small businesses, food trucks and face painting to 235 Trailblazer Drive from noon to 4 p.m.
7. Saturday, November 21: The second Browse & Stroll Art Market returns, again from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
8. Saturday, November 28: The Farmers Market hosts a Small Business Saturday market with 60-plus local makers at 235 Trailblazer Drive, noon to 3 p.m.

For a free weekend activity between those dates, the City's new TR Art Stamps program has you collect stamps at five downtown stations to build a postcard-sized piece of art. Stations are open Friday, Saturday and Sunday. On Main Street, Scout's Honor at 18 S. Main has added a dedicated Mahjong Lounge, which the shop now lists as open.

Small Business Saturday is the event that fits the corridor best. Shopping at Swamp Rabbit Gear & Spin or grabbing a cup at Leopard Forest that day backs the same small businesses that just made it through two years of detours.

What's Still Settling In

The City has declared the project finished, but a few final details are still landing. In its summer 2026 update, the City said solar lighting installation would start in early September, followed by final paving. It also said trees and plants would go in "once fall temperatures are favorable." If the planting strips look bare this month, that is the planned schedule, not a stalled project.

The schedule also slipped from the original forecast. The City's winter 2025 update said the project was on track for completion in early 2026. The official completion came October 1. Herman's summary at the ceremony was simple. "It's done, our businesses have suffered through with us, and they've made it through."

At Pres & Jess, we pay attention to projects like this because a rebuilt street changes how a town gets used day to day, well before it shows up anywhere else. If you live near the Poinsett corridor and want to know how a project like this might factor into your home's value, Team Inglee is happy to walk through it with you. Request Your Free Home Valuation, and we'll start with what's changed on your street.