Practice Area: Concept Development, Strategic Redevelopment, Adaptive Reuse

Location: High Point, North Carolina

​

Adaptive reuse concept for an opportunity for an alternative economy in the footprint of High Point’s furniture manufacturing industry.

 

Flexible, adaptable, reuse, of High Point’s abandoned/unused industrial loading dock buildings with centralized utilities/services hubs to which modular temporary units can plug into, expand, or rotate out.

 

Would provide opportunity for enterprise and gathering space promoting economic development beyond furniture manufacturing by:

 

• Adaptively reusing disused or underutilized [industrial] buildings in the downtown furniture district of High Point formerly used for the distribution of locally manufactured goods.

 

• Mitigating the condition in which it is often cost prohibitive for start ups and small business to maintain a physical presence in the central commercial district of High Point because of premium rental rates on available properties. Although much of the furniture manufacturing industry has left High Point the generational cultural and economic legacy remains- through incentives for property ownership and ‘holding out’ for [furniture] industry related tenants.

 

• Though there is a push to diversify High Point’s industrial and economic landscape this legacy hinders dynamic development in the shadow of the formerly thriving furniture industry.

 

A more flexible use of the existing building stock opens the area to a new model of economy, social and cultural engagement, and vibrancy to the community.