High Point council reviewing showroom district proposal
By Heath E. Combs -- Furniture Today, November 9, 2009
High Point — Several property holders here have expressed objections to a city showroom zoning district that leaves out several large showroom buildings.
High Point's City Council will consider the district at its Nov. 16 meeting.
It was proposed as part of a core city plan, undertaken to give High Point a more active downtown. Zoning would be amended to reflect the proposed 249-acre district.
City officials also said that, in part, the city hopes the boundary will encourage owners who sometimes let a showroom property outside the district sit empty to instead develop it for other uses. Any new showrooms would have to be built inside the district.
Existing showrooms would be grandfathered in through the new district and can expand through special exceptions. But for grandfathered properties to continue as showroom space, they must have been used at least once in the last four markets.
One showroom not included in the district is the 30,000-square-foot space at 115 N. Elm St. where L. & J.G. Stickley has shown for more than a decade. Company officials said Stickley has made significant investments to turn the building into an elegant high-end showroom.
"We attract hundreds of dealers and prospective dealers at each market. We have a prominent position amongst U.S. furniture manufacturers and our economic and employment investment in High Point and in the state of North Carolina is significant and growing," Aminy Audi, the company's president and CEO, said in a letter to city officials last month.
Audi said that being excluded from the district could marginalize its presence in High Point and hurt the monetary value of its showroom. Stickley is proposing that it be included in the district.
Among others left out of the district are the 96,000-square-foot Natale building and the more than 100,000-square-foot Union Square building, both on English Road. In recent markets, the two buildings have lost some anchor tenants such as South Cone and Fine Furniture Design & Marketing, although Natale gained a showroom for Stickley's Nichols & Stone division at last month's market.
Dwain Skeen, a broker for the Natale building's sale, lists the building at $7 million on his Web site.
Skeen said that the core city map was developed when properties within the district boundaries were still growing and needed limits. Now that the city's downtown is shrinking, he said, creating a district would be restrictive to trade and leaving some properties out is less practical.
Creating the district may also lead some exhibitors to want to be in the designated district's boundaries instead of outside, even if spaces are grandfathered in, he said.
"I'm just saying there's a lot of space available, and if you have showrooms outside of district, what do you do with that?" Skeen said.
Andy Piper, senior planner for the City of High Point, said the plan tries to include the vast majority of existing showroom square footage. That had to be balanced with keeping the district as compact as possible, because some areas outside the district have other potential uses, Piper said.
An unwieldy district with property holders waiting to develop showrooms could dry up rents and real estate values, he said.
The city doesn't want existing showrooms that will be grandfathered into the plan to go away, but planners do want to try to control where new ones are established, Piper said.
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