Promises delivered: Catawba County has reinvented itself as a high-tech hub, drawing on its roots in furniture and textiles.

• Author: Wood, Suzanne
• Position: SPONSORED SECTION: REGIONAL REPORT: CATAWBA COUNTY

Scott Millar keeps two Wall Street Journal articles in his Hickory office. The first, from 1998, touts the region's economic resilience. The second story came nearly two decades later--it's about the city's audacious bid for Amazon's second U.S. headquarters, nicknamed HQ2. The community at the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains pitched Catawba County's site as a blank slate with a big-city neighbor in Charlotte. Apple Inc. has already built a data center nearby--if Siri calls Catawba home, well, why not Alexa?

Although Hickory did not make Amazon's short list, the proposal shows the county's ability to work toward a common goal, says Millar, president of the Catawba County Economic Development Corp. "We worked alongside the county, Hickory, and the other cities and towns, chambers of commerce, workforcedevelopment commissions and had the help of an engineering and design firm," he says. "It was a coalescing of so many groups to get it done under a tough deadline."

It's an effort honed by practice when the county worked to recover from the recession of 2007-09. Now, the hard work is paying dividends in a revitalized furniture industry and booming medical and education initiatives made possible by many of the must-haves on Amazon's list, including access to interstate highways, a large, low-cost power grid, and a robust labor supply.

Millar displays the two newspaper articles as a reminder that Catawba County depends on cooperation in changing times. It wasn't long after that 1998 article that the region suffered as a result of a slump in the fiber-optics industry. Millar says the story reminds him of the fable of the lion and the gazelle. It doesn't matter whether you're a lion or a gazelle --when the sun comes up, you'd better be running.

The furniture industry has ebbed and flowed here, but after years of declining employment, a renaissance is happening in Catawba County. From a "reshoring" of production jobs to the expansion of existing companies, furniture is reclaiming some of the luster lost as part of manufacturing's overall decline. Furniture companies here added jobs between 2010 and 2015, and the trend seems on track to continue. Today, furniture production accounts for about 11,000 jobs in Catawba County, according to Hickory Furniture Mart, about a third of the industry's jobs in the state.

National retailer Minneapolis-based Room & Board Inc. plans to open a $12.9 million 250,000-square-foot distribution center by 2020 in the Newton Corporate Center. Room & Board carries furniture from at least three Catawba County manufacturers: McCreary Modern, Lee Industries and Precedent, a division of Sherrill Furniture.

Sutter Street Manufacturing, a subsidiary of San Francisco-based Williams-Sonoma Inc., announced plans to invest $1.5 million to expand its Claremont facilities, adding 72 jobs. Sutter Street produces upholstered furniture for brands such as Pottery Barn, West Elm and Williams-Sonoma Home.

With 60% of furniture sold in the U.S. connected to the region, says Hickory Furniture Mart General Manager Tracey Trimble, the city is still very much a furniture capital. Drawing 500,000 visitors a year, Hickory Furniture Mart is easily the largest tourism attraction in the county, responsible for filling hotels, restaurants and shops on a weekly basis...