No end to N.C. Research Campus hurdles

By Emily Ford

eford@salisburypost.com

Editor's note: This is the first of two stories about the creation and development of the N.C. Research Campus. The second story is scheduled for Tuesday in the Post.KANNAPOLIS — In the beginning, the N.C. Research Campus had mostly naysayers.

Few believed David Murdock's audacious vision of building the world's most complete life sciences complex on the ruins of a textile mill could become a reality.

But as the Research Campus began to take shape, critics started to reconsider.

State leaders from across the country even called Murdock, asking him to move the project from downtown Kannapolis.

Dr. Steven Leath, one of the founding fathers of the campus and vice president for research for the University of North Carolina System, said California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger called Murdock and asked, "Why are you doing it in North Carolina? Why don't you do it here?"

Leath, who worked in Kannapolis for N.C. State University before UNC President Erskine Bowles tapped him to oversee the project, detailed the challenges of creating the Research Campus while delivering the first lecture last week in a series called "The New New South." The series is examining the economic, social and cultural forces in the South.

In 2005, the UNC system and Murdock, billionaire owner of Castle & Cooke and Dole Food Co., announced a partnership to build the 350-acre mixed-use campus in Kannapolis, a former mill town ravaged by the offshoring of the textile industry. Murdock owned the mill in the 1980s and dedicated himself to health and wellness after his wife died of cancer in 1985.

The campus has transformed the former Cannon Mills site into what leaders hope will become an engine of economic growth for the region.

Often called the epitome of a public-private partnership, the campus encourages collaboration between industry and academia to find the next great discoveries in nutrition, health and agriculture.

Public-private partnerships like the one in Kannapolis form when "there is an issue too complex to solve alone and too important to leave alone," said Leath, who also serves as president of the David H. Murdock Research Institute, which runs the campus centerpiece Core Lab.

"Society's really big, really important problems like health and well-being are too complicated for any one person or any one group to solve," he said.

The Research Campus strives for a complete understanding of health and nutrition, from plant to prescription.

While a cardiologist might understand nutrition and heart disease, "doctors are not going into the field to develop plants," Leath said. "It takes a continuum."

N.C. State University can breed a healthier lettuce plant, but the school can't provide seeds to farmers or put greens on a dining room table, he said. For that, scientists need private partners like Dole Food and the new flagship campus tenant, global agricultural giant Monsanto.

Recent announcements that Monsanto and the federal government will join the Research Campus have helped to establish the biotechnology hub in the scientific world.

But five years ago, it took more than the promise of scientific discoveries to convince the N.C. General Assembly to allocate millions of taxpayer dollars each year to the unusual project.

While Murdock constructs the buildings, the state pays rent and salaries. Eventually, the state will own the buildings.

The potential economic benefit to North Carolina convinced legislators to fund the campus, Leath said.

If discoveries in Kannapolis could improve the health and longevity of North Carolina citizens, more companies would set up shop here, he said.

Concerned about healthcare costs of their potential workforce, companies often check local health statistics like Body Mass Index before choosing a location, Leath said.

"We don't look very good in this state," he said. "And that's part of what this is about."

The campus also presented legislators with an economic development experiment, Leath said.

They were interested in trying to transform a depressed area of the state once dependent on manufacturing by introducing an information-based economy. And in Kannapolis, they had Murdock willing to commit $1 billion of his personal fortune to the project, Leath said.

"Could you revitalize a town with a depressed economy in such a way?" he said. "It was a grand experiment."

Bowles, the UNC System president, had inherited the project from former president Molly Broad. Leath said Bowles was determined that it would not fail.

"He was a former investment banker, he knew the risk," Leath said.

Bowles championed the campus and helped convince legislators that scientists in Kannapolis could improve the health of North Carolina citizens while boosting the economy in one of the most depressed area of the state, Leath said.

"That message resonated, but it was still hard to get the big money," he said.

With Murdock committing his personal wealth, legislators "started saying, do we want to do it here, or do we want to see it go somewhere else," Leath said. "To have a private donor who is putting a lot of skin in the game, it made a big difference."

Leath developed a close partnership with Lynne Scott Safrit, president of campus developer Castle & Cooke North Carolina. He relied on Safrit, a Kannapolis native, to make personal connections in Raleigh.

"She walked the halls," he said. "She drove it home with the legislature over and over again."

Leath invited Safrit, who attended his lecture last week, to detail her role.

Safrit said she worked hard to explain the concept behind the Research Campus to individual legislators.

"They could see the good that would come from the research, they could see that this community was symbolic of North Carolina," she said.

While critics said it made no sense to launch a biotech complex so close to Research Triangle Park, Safrit said the location actually helped her cause.

Legislators from outside Raleigh "somewhat resented the power in Research Triangle Park" and liked the idea of funding a science project elsewhere, she said.

"It showed that we could develop a statewide biotech network," she said. "This was first effort to set that up outside RTP."

While Safrit lobbied the legislature, Leath spent hours talking to Castle & Cooke leadership in California, explaining requirements for scientific laboratories and justifying equipment needs.

Murdock's real estate company had built hotels and "fantastic office buildings, but had not one science lab to its credit," Leath said. "This was new territory to them."

Leath and Safrit had to integrate his expertise in science and hers in real estate development, he said.

"How did we work in each other's worlds?" he said. "That became a big part of the project."

They developed the ability to see the greater good and advocate for each other's needs, Leath said.

"If you don't have that level of trust, those kinds of partnerships wouldn't work," he said. "The people who didn't understand that aren't involved anymore."

Now, less than two years after Murdock officially opened the campus, his project still has naysayers.

And it still has problems.

Major tenants PepsiCo and Pharmaceutical Product Development have pulled out. Some other companies won't commit unless the economy improves.

Construction and hiring at the campus came to a standstill during the recession.

While the Rowan-Cabarrus Community College workforce training facility should open this summer, a medical office building, agricultural glass house and townhome project are on hold.

The city of Kannapolis could not sell a $168.4 million bond package that would have paid for infrastructure improvements around the campus, including a new public health department, and Cabarrus County commissioners are reconsidering their support for the campus.

But state legislators gave the campus an additional $3 million this year, the only science project in the UNC system that received an increase. State funding for the Research Campus now totals $24 million annually.

Many universities in Kannapolis are recruiting new faculty, and each faculty member should hire four to six additional employees with grant money. The U.S. Department of Agriculture should join this spring.

The campus will host a large international conference in 2011 and continues to pique interest around the globe. Forty Japanese scientists recently toured the complex and said they want to partner with researchers and companies in Kannapolis.

About 200 people now work at the campus.

Leath predicted the number will total 300 by year's end, a 50 percent increase.

See Tuesday's Post for more on Dr. Steven Leath's account of creating the N.C. Research Campus.