Coming up next month will be crucial votes that will determine whether or not the state’s forensic mental health center will move to High Point.

Lots going on here, but I’ll try to give you the short version. For starters, a forensic mental health center, as Capital Beat explains, holds “patients ordered to get mental health treatment before they stand trial or ordered into the custody of a mental health provider after trial.” The facility would combine the mental health units now at Central Prison and Dorthea Dix Hospital. A private provider, GEO Care, would operate the facility.

As you can probably imagine, not everyone in High Point is fired up about the prospect, most notably Mayor Becky Smothers, who —according to council member Latimer Alexander —is rushing a rezoning that would block the facility. Interestingly enough, Alexander is also accusing Smothers of protecting land slated for mixed-use development across the street part-owned by David Griffin Jr., whose dad was in the middle of the controversy surrounding the White Street landfill in Greensboro.

But if you’ve ever driven through HP’s Five Points neighborhood, you’ll catch on to the bottom line real quick:

That anyone would not want a treatment center for the criminal justice system on the Evergreens property is unsurprising. With the new US 311 bypass now running past High Point and one of its few interchanges located at the intersection with Greensboro Road, Greensboro Road will be a major entranceway to High Point – one that already needs some work, given the deteriorating beige-box commercial buildings that dominate Five Points. A commercially operated mental health unit for the criminal justice system didn’t top anyone in High Point’s wish list for the county property.

Stay tuned.