Facebook's friend: aided by the social-networking behemoth and a Taiwanese textile company, forest city is lumbering ahead.

• Author: Mildenberg, David
• Position: TOWN SQUARE

Arriving a little early for a 9 a.m. appointment to see Forest City's industry recruiter, Tom Johnson, it was a bit jarring to hear his assistant, Birgit Dilgert, say he was having a cup of coffee across the street at Smith Drug. While big-city cubicle warriors crank out reports, it seems people in small towns still take time to get to know each other.

Indeed, walking around downtown Forest City, it isn't hard to imagine the '50s and '60s when Pittsburgh Pirates catcher Smoky Burgess spent his off-seasons running a nearby gas station. "Fill it up, Smoky," was a favorite town saying. At the time, U.S. 74 connected Charlotte and Asheville, a gorgeous, curvy route running through Forest City, Rutherfordton, Lake Lure, Bat Cave and other towns.

Getting around Forest City can be a little more complicated these days. For one thing, there are three highways with fairly similar names. Old U.S. 74 is called Business 74. A bypass on the west side, where Wal-Mart and other chain stores operate, is called 74A. And there's U.S. 74, the near-interstate quality highway skirting town to the south. Still, a lot of interesting companies are finding their way to help transform the city that was originally called Burnt Chimney.

A month after Donald Trump's surprising victory, which followed much rhetoric on bringing jobs back to the U.S., Taiwan's Everest Textile Co. said it would open a Forest City plant that is expected to employ 610 people within five years, making fabric for athletic apparel. It's Everest's first U.S. facility, adding to sites in Taiwan, Thailand and mainland China.

North Carolina's top industry hunter isn't sure if shifting U.S. trade policy specifically influenced the company. "But things are converging in a way that we see heightened interest from overseas companies," says Christopher Chung, the son of Taiwanese immigrants and chief executive officer of the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina. He expects other foreign interests to follow Everest, which was the state's biggest jobs expansion reported by Chung's group in 2016.

The irony of a Chinese textile company investing in Forest City is obvious. For about a century, companies including Cone Mills, Stonecutter Mills, National Textiles and Burlington Industries were dominant employers. With the shift to overseas production, though, the population of 7,500 has barely budged over the last 40 years. None of those companies still operate in Rutherford County, where the...