Research campus plans unveiled

KANNAPOLIS - Rising slowly from his seat, David Murdock, 81, stepped to the microphone and gazed out at the immense crowd.

His wrinkled hands resting on the edge of the lectern, he leaned forward, smiled, and announced the rebirth of a city.

Murdock, owner of Dole Food Company Inc., unveiled his plan Monday to partner with the UNC system to make Kannapolis a worldwide center for biotechnology.

The news comes two years after Pillowtex Corp. closed the doors on its textile plant in the city, laying off more than 4,000 workers.

Carlyle Rutledge, a 95-year-old native of Kannapolis and a former state representative and senator, said he is excited at the prospect of the new facility.

"I've seen some great things happen in Kannapolis," Rutledge said as he toured the site, looking at the diagrams of the future campus.

"This is a greater vision than I ever dreamed to happen."

Officials will spend between $600 million and $700 million building an N.C. Research Campus within the city in the next five years, Murdock said.

When finished, the campus will house more than one million square feet of laboratory and office space, in addition to 350,000 square feet of retail and commercial space and 700 residential units.

The bulk of the money will come from Murdock and Dole, but the N.C. General Assembly also will be contributing to the effort.

"The state legislature has committed to fund us $60 million in one-time funding to buy specialty equipment," said UNC-system President Molly Broad.

Beyond the initial funding, the state will give $25 million per year in support of the universities' work at the complex, she said.

The UNC Institute for Excellence in Nutrition will be established by UNC-Chapel Hill to study the impact of diet on the brain, obesity and cancer.

"We're hoping that this will be a world-class research institute," said Steven Zeisel, professor of nutrition at UNC-CH.

N.C. State University will construct an Institute for Advanced Fruit and Vegetable Science, which will work to find ways to manufacture more nutritious fruits and vegetables.

A school of science for 11th and 12th-grade girls will be developed by UNC-Charlotte. Officials said the university ultimately would work on the bioinformatics end of nutrition research.

Duke University might also get in on the action, but a deal hasn't been finalized.

The capabilities of such a highly scientific region will be attractive to many people and businesses across the country, Broad said.

"The research that will be conducted here will attract some of the world's greatest scientists and graduate students," she said.

Construction on the first facility, a 330,000-square-foot Core Laboratory, will break ground within 90 days, Murdock said.

The facility will contain state-of-the-art equipment used for everything from DNA sequencing to mass spectrometry, and could open within two years.

A 1,000-seat auditorium for national scientific conferences and local cultural events also is planned.

The new campus ultimately could allow the city to lead the state in scientific research, said N.C. House Speaker Jim Black, D-Mecklenburg.

"Look out Research Triangle, here comes Kannapolis!" Black said during the event.

Dole officials want to benefit local farmers by purchasing large quantities of their fruits and veggies for use at the center.

"The effect will reach far beyond the borders of this campus and involve the entire state's agricultural community," Murdock said.

About 300 researchers will be hired to fulfill the needs of the complex, he said.

And new training will be available for those who lost their jobs at the textile plant in 2003.

"A facility will be located right on campus to help former Pillowtex workers and others to be retrained for work in the biotechnical community," Murdock said.

The creation of such a scientific utopia has long been a personal interest, he said.

"I've always dreamed of building a scientific community that is entirely scientific."

Such a community would be a huge lift for the economically scarred city of Kannapolis, Rutledge said.

"With that vision that (Murdock) had, it's just beyond anything that I dreamed of," he said.

"I hope I can live long enough to see the fruition of it."

 

Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.