The Piedmont Triad cities of Greensboro, High Point and Winston-Salem lie in a scenic central region between North Carolina’s Atlantic coast and western mountains. Groups find diverse heritage to explore in the area and business-friendly facilities. This is where Moravians migrated from central Europe in the 18th century, and peaceful protests helped spark civil change in the 1960s.
Though the area remains a furniture, tobacco and textile manufacturing center represented by corporations such as Hanes, International Textile Group and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, technology businesses have begun to fill in some gaps left by global economic changes.
Piedmont Triad Research Park in Winston-Salem supports life science and information technology research. Two universities—University of North Carolina at Greensboro and North Carolina A&T State University—are cooperating to develop Gateway University Research Park, a center of research on biological, life and environmental science projects. The 75-acre park is expected to create hundreds of jobs and generate millions in annual revenue.
Greensboro
Greensboro is the location of one of the largest group facilities on the East Coast: the 1,017-room Sheraton Greensboro Hotel at Four Seasons. It connects with the 250,000-square-foot Joseph S. Khoury Convention Center. Its sister property, The Grandover Resort & Conference Center, with 247 guest rooms and 45,000 square feet of function space, offers groups a one-stop stay, meet and play facility with a spa and two golf courses in a suburban setting. Other full-service hotels include the Marriott Greensboro Downtown and Embassy Suites Hotel Greensboro-Airport.
"We are a destination that’s drivable in five hours or less from both D.C. and Atlanta," says Ava Pope, director of sales for the Greensboro CVB. "Interstates 40 and 85 come through our city."
Religious meetings, youth sports groups and state and national associations are accommodated at the Greensboro Coliseum Complex, she adds.
"We have hosted both youth and adult swimming meets in the complex, and we’ve also had the Junior Olympics track and field events," Pope says. "The coliseum seats up to 23,000."
Additions to the complex’s facilities are coming next year with the debut of the 74,000-square-foot Greensboro Aquatic Center and the ACC Hall of Champions first phase. Pope says her city’s ties with the Atlantic Coast Conference are strong, and the new hall is expected to bring in various championship events and serve the community 15 hours a day with swim classes and rehabilitation therapies.
Many groups that meet in Greensboro visit or have an off-site event at the new International Civil Rights Center and Museum, which opened in early in 2010. It is housed in the former F.W. Woolworth building downtown, where the first lunch counter sit-in protests of the Civil Rights era occurred.
Winston-Salem
History and a lively arts culture mingle with campus life at Wake Forest University and Winston-Salem State University in this city settled by Moravians (German-speaking Protestants) in the 18th century.
Historic Bethabara Park is the original settlement site, and a 1788 church still stands there. Moravians built the city that would become Salem, a thriving trading center. Today, Old Salem Museum and Gardens is one of America’s most authentic colonial sites and the location of over 100 restored and reconstructed buildings, including the state’s oldest standing African-American church. Costumed interpreters demonstrate the early trades like woodworking and tailoring. Locals are quick to point out that this is no miniature Williamsburg because that Virginia site had to reconstruct most of its colonial buildings, while Salem required only restoration.
Winston-Salem is often called "The City of the Arts" because in 1949 it was the first city in the U.S. to establish an arts council. It is home to the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and the Downtown Arts District Association (DADA), where there’s a variety of studios, residences and businesses focused on art ranging from painting to pottery. The Werehouse is part coffeehouse, part concert hall and part gallery, a place where artists live, work and display their output under one roof. Arts festivals fill each year’s calendar.
The city has a vibrant nightlife scene at places like Finnegan’s Wake Irish Pub and wine bars. Live music flows from clubs in the downtown district.
Benton Convention Center is the city’s premier meeting facility downtown, and it is connected to both the Embassy Suites Winston-Salem and the Winston-Salem Marriott for a combined 160,000 square feet of meeting space. Other major facilities include the Lawrence Joel Veterans Memorial Coliseum, with 91,000 square feet of function space, and the Winston-Salem Sports-Entertainment Complex, featuring exhibition, theater and meeting spaces.
"Our convention center complex gives groups a comprehensive package downtown," says Candy Cline, senior sales manager for Visit Winston-Salem. "You work with one culinary and one sales staff and that makes things seamless."
The coliseum hosts many religious and other SMERF meetings, she adds, as well as state and national association groups.
For an elegant country site that blends Old World charm with modern amenities for executive and other business meetings large and small, there’s Graylyn International Conference Center, the 55-acre former private estate that accommodates up to 240 people. Team-building exercises such as "Geo-Cache" (an activity that uses GPS devices), are a Graylyn specialty.
High Point
High Point is the center of the home furnishings industry and carries the moniker "The Home Furnishings Capital of the World." Two major international furniture trade shows in High Point bring thousands of attendees annually to the Triad region.
Marva Wells, sales manager for the High Point CVB, says the furniture industry isn’t the only meetings business for High Point, however.
"The furniture markets are one week each in April and October, and we bring in lots of SMERF groups 50 other weeks in the year," she says. "People have learned that High Point is centrally located in the state, within just a few hours’ drive of D.C. and Atlanta. And you aren’t that far from both the beach and the mountains when you get here. Accessibility is part of our story and so is a friendly working atmosphere and reasonable costs."
The city’s full-service hotels with meeting space include the 252-room Best Western Hotel downtown. Showplace is the premier High Point convention and exhibit site across the street, with 82,000 square feet of function space that includes a 67,000-square-foot exhibit area and a 15,000-square-foot atrium. Another High Point group space is The Suites at Market Square, with 115,000 square feet of function space.
Many visitors bring their shopping lists with them to High Point, to use as they enjoy retail therapy at over 50 local furniture outlets and discount stores brimming with products by myriad manufacturers. Other after-business activities include visits to the charming Doll & Miniature Museum of High Point and local Civil War-era plantations, and outdoor fun like hiking nature trails at the Piedmont Environmental Center. Art galleries, theater and concerts are also in the local to-do mix.
High Point Museum and Historical Park contains several vintage buildings, including the 1786 Haley House, the oldest-surviving documented structure on its original site in Guilford County. Also on display are Hoggatt House, built in 1801, and a mid-18th century blacksmith shop. The museum interprets three centuries of local life.
