Appraising the Furniture Market.

• Position: Triad

You can forgive the folks who run High Point Market for being nervous. Gov. Pat McCrory had been in office only a few months when his budget proposal cut the state's annual support for the furniture showcase from $1.7 million to about $800,000. The backlash was swift, and so was McCrory's backpedaling. It was all a mistake, he said, and put the money back into his proposal. But the High Point Market Authority isn't taking chances. In April, it said it would spend $50,000 for Duke University to conduct an economic-impact study that it hopes will validate the state's investment.

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Held in April and October, the market attracts about 75,000 attendees and 2,000 exhibitors to each event. It's serious business not just for the sofa set but also for restaurants, hotels and the like. And while many furniture-makers have moved jobs offshore, North Carolina still claims to be the heart of the industry. Doug Bassett, chairman of the authority's board and president of Galax, Va.-based Vaughn-Bassett Furniture, told the Winston-Salem Journal that the market "increases the chances that new industry jobs will be created in our state." Arcadia, Wis.-based Ashley Furniture Industries Inc. broke ground this spring on a 1 million-square-foot expansion of its 1.7 million-square-foot manufacturing and distribution center in nearby Davie County.

State officials pumped up support for the High Point market in 2005, when a rival one opened in Las Vegas. There was concern that the glitz of the desert city would irreparably harm High Point Market. (A year earlier, UNC Greensboro released a study claiming the market was worth about $1 billion annually to the Triad.) The competition has become murkier since 2011, when International Market Centers LP, which developed the Las Vegas market, bought most of the space in High Point and made both cities its headquarters. Nevertheless, market officials contend state money is needed because other countries, such as China, might...