Showroom city : real estate and resistance in the furniture capital of the world

A unique and engaging account of local urban decision-making within the globalizing world High Point, North Carolina, is known as the “Furniture Capital of the World.” Once a manufacturing stronghold, most of its furniture factories have closed over the past forty years, with production shipped off to low-wage countries. Yet as manufacturing left, the city tightened its hold on a biannual global exposition that serves as the world’s furniture fashion runway. At the High Point Market, visitors from more than one hundred nations traverse twelve million square feet of meticulous design. Downtown buildings—once courthouses, movie theaters, post offices, and gas stations—are now chic showroom spaces, even as many sit empty between each exposition. In Showroom City , John Joe Schlichtman applies an ethnographic lens to the global exposition’s relationship with High Point after it defeated rival Chicago in the 1960s and established itself as the world’s dominant furniture center. In recent decades, following trends in global finance, private equity firms were increasingly behind downtown High Point’s real estate transactions, coordinated by buyers far removed from the region. Then, in one massive transaction in 2011, a firm funded by Bain Capital purchased every major showroom building, and the majority of downtown real estate was under one owner. Showroom City is a story of exclusionary growth and unchecked development, of a city flailing to fill the void left by its dwindling factories. But beyond that Schlichtman engages the general lessons behind both High Point’s deindustrialization and its stunning reinvention as a furniture fashion, merchandising, and design node. With great nuance, he delves deeply to reveal how power operates locally and how citizens may affirm, exploit, influence, and resist the takeover of their community. "High Point, North Carolina, is known as the 'Furniture Capital of the World.' Once a manufacturing stronghold, most of its furniture factories have closed over the past forty years, with production shipped off to low-wage countries. Yet as manufacturing left, the city tightened its hold on a biannual global exposition that serves as the world's furniture fashion runway. At the High Point Market, visitors from more than one hundred nations traverse twelve million square feet of meticulous design. Downtown buildings--once courthouses, movie theaters, post offices, and gas stations--are now chic showroom spaces, even as many sit empty between each exposition. In Showroom City, John Joe Schlichtman applies an ethnographic lens to the global exposition's relationship with High Point after it defeated rival Chicago in the 1960s and established itself as the world's dominant furniture center. In recent decades, following trends in global finance, private equity firms were increasingly behind downtown High Point's real estate transactions, coordinated by buyers far removed from the region. Then, in one massive transaction in 2011, a firm funded by Bain Capital purchased every major showroom building, and the majority of downtown real estate was under one owner. Showroom City is a story of exclusionary growth and unchecked development, of a city flailing to fill the void left by its dwindling factories. But beyond that Schlichtman engages the general lessons behind both High Point's deindustrialization and its stunning reinvention as a furniture fashion, merchandising, and design node. With great nuance, he delves deeply to reveal how power operates locally and how citizens may affirm, exploit, influence, and resist the takeover of their community"--Provided by publisher Sociology: Urban/Urban Studies/American Studies Cover Page 1 Globalization and Community Series 3 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Contents 6 Foreword: Learning from the Outlier 8 Introduction: An Empty and Impeccable Downtown 12 Chapter 1. The Common Threads in High Point’s Uncommon Fabric 32 Part I: Out of the Mills: A Small City Goes Global 52 Chapter 2. Hollowing Out: The “All-American” Downtown Goes Temp 54 Chapter 3. The Golden Goose: High Point Becomes the World’s Market Center 82 Chapter 4. The Cruise Ship and the Forbidden City: Aesthetic Flair and Private Equity Come to Town 108 Part II: Temp Town: Spaces and Seasons of the Furniture Capital of the World 136 Chapter 5. Hibernation: The Downtown Landscape during Backstage Months 138 Chapter 6. Choreographing Mini-Manhattan: Visitors Experience the Market 172 Chapter 7. The Fragmented Year-Round Design Cluster 208 Part III: The Fight to Reclaim Downtown 230 Chapter 8. Poking the Golden Goose: A Brief History of Local Protest 232 Chapter 9. The City Project and the Pursuit of a Living Room 260 Chapter 10. High Pointers Plan a Downtown for Themselves 290 Conclusion: Integrating Frontstage and Backstage 318 Acknowledgments 342 Appendix: The People in Showroom City 346 Notes 350 Index 386 About the Authors 409