GREENSBORO — If the midcentury style of the Eames lounge chair isn’t enough of a tipoff that you’re near the world’s furniture capital, turn and look out the window.
About 9 miles to the south you’ll see High Point’s skyline, dominated by the hulking furniture showroom buildings that fill the city’s downtown.
It’s an authentic background to a luxury hotel suite designed to immerse guests in the culture and industry of the Piedmont Triad and North Carolina at the newly renovated Grandover Resort and Conference Center.
For nearly 20 years the spa, golf and meeting resort has entertained guests from musician Bruce Springsteen to PGA golfers, from textile and furniture industry executives to scores of other groups that choose Grandover for everything from breakfast meetings to several-day conferences.
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Developer Joseph S. Koury envisioned the resort as a European-style retreat on 1,600 rolling acres in southern Greensboro near Interstate 85. He died in 1998, just as the development was coming together. But Koury Corp. remained faithful to his vision for nearly two decades.
The guardians of his legacy have felt in recent years that the resort didn’t go far enough to give people a sense that they were in the Triad, that its Old World theme took travelers to another time but did not tell them anything about the place where they’d traveled.
So the corporation began a $10 million renovation to update its exterior and its 244 rooms and luxury suites, give the spa a makeover and replace the golf greens of the resort’s East Course. The suites were finished in October.
Now the resort features contemporary art, industrial artifacts and keepsakes from the region’s rich history.
“It was time to pay homage and pay tribute to our roots in the Piedmont Triad,” said Christina York, Grandover’s director of sales and marketing.
Signs of that change are right in the lobby of the luxury hotel and spa building on a knoll at the heart of the property.
One of the first things you see off the lobby is a bright new gallery that features styles from traditional regional pottery to more contemporary art by Joe Koury’s daughter, Ashley Vanore.
Around a corner sits a museum piece that until about a year ago was weaving rolls of fabric for Cone Denim — a Draper loom from the White Oak manufacturing plant. About a yard of dark denim from the final run still hangs from the 100-year-old loom, which was idled when its owner International Textile Group closed the plant at the end of 2017.
Grandover General Manager Kelly Harrill said the museum look wouldn’t be complete without a square of the plant’s original wood flooring, which now sits as a base for the loom.
“Everyone that travels, no matter where you go, you want to have a sense of place,” Harrill said of the changes.
In addition to such unique suites as the “Market Suite” designed to showcase the furniture industry, York said the resort wants to get the word out that not only is the resort more about the Triad, it’s also for local residents to use.
Many people, she said, think Grandover is a private club. But it is, in fact, a golf and hotel resort open to the public. York stresses that Grandover isn’t a country club — you don’t need a membership to play or dine there.
“A lot of locals think we have a membership,” she said.
Harrill shows off the rest of the hotel’s public areas that include a refreshed restaurant, a bar called 1808, after the year Greensboro was founded, and other areas full of local memorabilia, photos of golfers from what was the Greater Greensboro Open golf tournament, now known as the Wyndham Championship, and special art pieces.
But it’s the suites that upscale guests, families and other special-occasion parties will see that set the tone for the rest of the resort, Harrill said.
Five signature suites each have clear themes: Cone Denim, Carolina (the state, not the university), Gate City, Market and Seagrove Pottery.
In the Cone Denim suite, a sofa is trimmed with denim, wall-hangings include an original pair of oil-stained overalls worn and torn by a worker, and there’s a bar made from floorboards from the White Oak Plant.
Harrill said businesses are already putting up executives in the furniture and denim suites.
“ITG puts people in this room,” Harrill said.
The Carolina suite features a mountains-to-the-sea theme with photographs of the Wright brothers and other things to represent the coast and cut mineral geodes to represent the mountains. The Uwharrie Mountains are visible from the window.
The Gate City suite features framed passes that soldiers would use when they left the city’s Overseas Replacement Depot, which processed thousands of military men during World War II; original local postcards that show Women’s College, now UNC-Greensboro; War Memorial Stadium; and the Greensboro Country Club.
The Seagrove Pottery Suite features signature pottery pieces from local potters used in a variety of ways.
Even though the two-bedroom suites Grandover offers can cost about $1,000 a night, they are rare in a hotel that features most rooms for less than $200 a night and might make a good getaway for people in the region interested in golf or the full spa and pools.
“We know that we have this reputation as ‘it might be too lavish, it might be too expensive,’” York said. “We want the local community to know they can use us on a regular basis.”