The best part: It’s free.

The event will give a group the Kannapolis City Council appointed last year the chance to unveil a list of goals. Called the Vision Cabinet, the group of 20 community and business leaders has tried to identify ways to improve Kannapolis’ quality of life.

The event is Oct. 21, a Thursday, from 5:30 to 8 p.m. It includes a barbecue dinner, 15-minute slide presentation, Irish and Scottish music, a choral ensemble and door prizes. The group is paying for the party with help from two companies; Pillowtex, parent company of Fieldcrest Cannon and the city’s largest employer, contributed $25,000, and Atlantic American Properties gave another $10,000 and space for the city to open its “vision center” at 120 S. Main St.

Tuesday, consultant Joe Lanford told members of the Vision Cabinet that it must hold someone accountable for seeing that the goals get accomplished — not just put in a notebook and set on a shelf.

“It’s often difficult to get a consensus out of a group this big,” said Lanford, the president of Urban Strategies in Rock Hill, S.C., a company the city hired last year to work with the Vision Cabinet. “If we don’t get started and we don’t have someone responsible for what we do, then we’ll never get anywhere.”

Urban Strategies designed a new logo and a slogan to jibe with the city’s textile heritage: “Weaving a Shared Future.”

The Vision Cabinet has concentrated on four areas of Kannapolis to improve and dubbed them “live,” “work,” “play” and “learn.”

City Council member Jennie C. Wyrick, a student at Rowan-Cabarrus Community College, said the Vision Cabinet has helped bring residents together to find solutions. Many business leaders, for example, don’t want Kannapolis to become a bedroom community to Charlotte. They would like to see the city’s economy diversify, making it less reliant on Fieldcrest Cannon.

“It’s helped the community come together in a way in which they normally wouldn’t,” Wyrick said.

Many of the Vision Cabinet’s goals are concrete but still lack financial support. By 2002, for example, the group would like to:

• Apply to get the part of the city built by Cannon Mills designated as a national historic district. Participating property owners could then get tax credits, and the designation would likely raise property values and preserve the area’s history.
  
• Open lakes to recreational use and market Kannapolis as a “city of lakes.” Kannapolis has four publicly owned lakes, but only one — Concord Lake — allows public access.
  
• Develop a “campus plan” for A.L. Brown and Kannapolis Middle School. A fund-raising campaign would target alumni.
  
• Develop a business park along Interstate 85, N.C. 73 and the proposed Westside Bypass.
  
• Develop two new sports complexes — one for baseball and softball and one for soccer.
  
• Create a marketing plan for Kannapolis.