It’s Your Business: Nurturing Innovation and Resilience Through Economic Development

Our community is one of makers and innovators. We have consistently adapted to changing times to foster new opportunities. Bloomington-based Showers Brothers Furniture Co. made 60% of the furniture in North America in the 1920s. In 1940, RCA purchased a Showers Brothers building on South Rogers Street to create RCA Plant One. RCA produced radios, tank transmitters, and receivers for the Army Signal Corps and other defense products in World War II, and then televisions. They employed 8,000 people at their peak and, in 1985, sold to General Electric. GE soon sold its consumer electronics to French company Thomson SA, which employed over 1,600 employees in Bloomington in 1990. When Thomson Consumer Electronics closed and laid off 1,200 employees in 1997, the community rallied to redevelop the site. In 2004, Cook Pharmica opened its facility on the site, which it later sold to Catalent in 2017.

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