Check out Charlotte’s new, huge RH (formerly Restoration Hardware), now open
On Thursday morning, (RH, formerly Restoration Hardware), was Charlotte’s Cinderella getting ready for the ball.
Three stories of crew members weaved past ladders and rugs covered in plastic and boxes of light bulbs waiting to be installed.
There were light fixtures to dust and straighten. Chandeliers twinkled at every twist and turn of the space, including in the grand double floating staircase. Plants were being sprayed with water and placed just so. A fountain was turned on and an employee walked around it, wiping his hand around the edge to trigger the water to start cascading around the edge, bringing the space to life.
It’s like watching Cinderella’s helpers scurry about, looking for just the right materials for her gown. It was peeking inside a clock’s inner workings. It was watching the average girl’s glasses swapped for contacts, her braces taken off and her hair blown out in an ’80s movie, just hours before prom.
So this is what it’s like seeing a lavish furniture store with a three-story gallery and rooftop restaurant come alive.
RH Charlotte, The Gallery at Phillips Place, in SouthPark
There has been a lot of anticipation built around Friday’s opening of the 50,000-square-foot RH Charlotte, The Gallery at Phillips Place, in SouthPark.
RH’s goal is to “revolutionize physical retailing” with its Rooftop Restaurant overlooking a landscaped park and showcasing luxury home furnishings in a gallery setting.
‘Blur the lines between residential and retail’
“We don’t build retail stores, we build inspiring spaces that blur the lines between residential and retail, indoors and outdoors, home and hospitality,” CEO Gary Friedman said in an email to The Charlotte Observer.
The galleries showcase RH Interiors, Modern and Outdoor collections from internationally renowned designers, according to the company. RH Charlotte also includes an RH Interior Design Firm & Atelier.
‘The best burger in New York’
At the restaurant, Friedman’s favorite meals include the RH burger, “called the best burger in New York” by the Financial Times, and the shaved ribeye on charred garlic bread.
“I generally flip a coin.” he said.
For breakfast or brunch, he likes the RH scramble with shaved truffles or the truffled grilled cheese.
It is now officially SouthPark’s first area rooftop bar, at 6903 Phillips Place Court. The second will be AC Hotel, which is opening Cordial on June 19.)
“It will bring a new level of sophistication to the Charlotte retail marketplace and it will be a destination in itself,” Charlotte-based real estate developer Lincoln Harris’ CEO Johnny Harris said by email. “Phillips Place has been a trendsetter from the time it was conceived in the early 1990s, bringing a retail-residential mixed-use concept to suburban Charlotte that was unique at the time.”
Charlotte, a new design
Friedman said the success of Charlotte long-standing store supports the expansion. While other RH galleries in New York and Chicago were re-adapted historic buildings, Charlotte is unique.
“RH Charlotte is an entirely new design built from the ground up,” Friedman said.
Friedman is the visionary behind saving the company from bankruptcy, who reconceptualized the brand to become what he called, “the largest and most profitable luxury home furnishings brand in the world.”
Friedman said brick-and-mortar retail isn’t dead. But RH is evolving to create spaces that are “more home than store.”
“It’s really not about the Internet, it’s about the lack of imagination in retail,” Friedman said. “Most retail stores are archaic windowless boxes that lack any sense of humanity. The response we hear the most from customers when they shop our new galleries is, ‘I want to live here.’
“I’ve been in retail for over 40 years, and I’ve never heard anyone say they want to live in a retail store, but then again, we don’t build retail stores,” he said.
Harris said RH Charlotte will draw a wider range of visitors and more business.
“We think retailers and other potential tenants will want to be where RH Charlotte is located. And the experience of other retail centers featuring an RH Design Gallery bears that out,” Harris said.
Opening amid COVID
Freidman said because of the novel coronavirus, a post COVID-19 party will likely be held in late summer or early fall to celebrate RH Charlotte’s opening.
“At RH, we live by Einstein’s three rules of work. ‘Out of clutter find simplicity. From discord find harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity,’” Friedman said. “The important point is the pandemic is a temporal, not a systemic issue. Our business has already rebounded and our sales are trending higher than last year, with approximately 85% of our physical Galleries now open.
Like most retail businesses, the crisis hit the company hard with several weeks of stores closings companywide that included temporarily furloughing about 2,300 workers, permanently cutting the workforce by 440, leader salary reductions and cuts in capital expenditures and expenses by up to $150 million in fiscal 2020, Friedman said online in April. However, Charlotte is one of two galleries still opening this summer. The other is RH Marin in California.
“The vast majority of our furloughed team members have already returned with the rest returning in the next week,” he said.
This story was originally published June 11, 2020 at 10:58 AM.
