A New UNC Campus - In Kannapolis!

Chapel Hill Herald, Saturday October 08, 2005

Last month's announcement of a new research campus in Kannapolis places UNC's Carolina North project in a new light. It also vindicates ideas promoted by Chapel Hillians over the past decade.

As described in Carolina Newswire on September 12, billionaire David H. Murdock, owner of Dole Food Company, and UNC System President Molly Broad unveiled plans for the North Carolina Research Campus, a massive scientific and economic revitalization project that encompasses the former Cannon Mills plant and entire downtown area of Kannapolis. They were joined by Mike Easley, Elizabeth Dole, Richard Burr, Robin Hayes, Marc Basnight, James Black, and a host of other officials.

Broad observed, "We cannot overstate the significance of the University's embarking - in partnership with Dole and David Murdock - on a project of this magnitude, scale, and potential. This initiative advances our three-part mission of teaching, research, and public service - and in the process gives new meaning to the terms 'collaborative' and 'multi-disciplinary.'

“It underscores our commitment to foster statewide economic development and technology transfer - and demonstrates a new level of our commitment to serve the needs of the entire state. This project will serve as a national model for what can happen when private enterprise, higher education, and state government partner to affect positive change for the future."

As well as facilities connected to NCSU, UNC-Charlotte, and other campuses, the project will host UNC-CH's Institute for Excellence in Nutrition, which will explore the relationship between nutrition and the brain, obesity, and cancer. The Center will research the causes of cancer and the related genetic, biological, and behavioral mechanisms.

Researchers will collaborate with NCSU and other institutions to translate research into practice, with the goal of promoting better nutrition throughout the state and nation. Community-based interventions, population cohort studies, and clinical research on treatment and prevention also would be undertaken. The facility will encompass some 120,000 square feet.

This development confirms the perspective articulated by some Chapel Hillians over the past decade. At the 1995 town council planning retreat, Joyce Brown questioned the presumption that major UNC expansion should take place in Chapel Hill. She suggested that the state should take a hard look at the appropriate location for major facilities.

I echoed these sentiments in my November 15, 2003 column: “A statewide vision of education that addressed our changing economic climate would place both educational and economic development resources in the more depressed areas of the state. Rather than encourage public-private spin-offs in one of the richest areas of the state, let's spread the wealth around. And let's beef up educational and training opportunities for those North Carolinians who need it most.”

Not everyone was convinced. Only four days later, the Herald editorialized that “even the advocates of such a strategy have to acknowledge that it's a high-risk play. The advantages that already exist here are unique in North Carolina.”

It is unlikely that Chancellor Moeser was thinking of this local debate last month when he said of the Kannapolis project "we have an opportunity to reach out to a region of the state particularly hard-hit by global competition for manufacturing and agriculture. We want to leverage our considerable research strengths… creating jobs and improving the lives of all North Carolinians… to make this another example of how our interdisciplinary approach to problems can pay dividends for the state's citizens."

The irony in this development is that, while the perspective of locals is all too easily dismissed as NIMBYism, those NIMBYs in their zeal to get the best results in their back yard often find important kernels of truth. Thus, for example, the residents of Lake Hogan Farms challenged the Winmore proposal and, although Winmore was approved, so were improvements to Carrboro's stream buffer ordinance.

Similarly, there are few places in the state where citizens think as much about the future of UNC as in Chapel Hill and Carrboro. From time to time we do indeed come up with a good idea.

On the other hand, while it may take a village to develop certain insights, let's hope it doesn't always require a billionaire to get a project like the North Carolina Research Campus going. Kannapolis City Manager Mike Legg said "to have a billionaire interested in your city is a wonderful thing." It certainly is for a town like Kannapolis where the decades-long dominant employer recently closed its doors.

Kudos to Murdock, Broad and the other leaders who have nurtured this project. Let's just hope that, before Carolina North is pushed through at its proposed scale, other economically troubled areas of the state are given due consideration, with or without the help of billionaires.