By Emily Ford
eford@salisburypost.com
KANNAPOLIS ó N.C. State University will open its Faculty House next month for scientists and business partners visiting the N.C. Research Campus.
The new home at 105 S. Ridge Ave. offers five private suites plus a common kitchen, laundry room, parlor and conference room.
The house is designed to accommodate visitors for one or many nights while encouraging intellectual interaction between guests, who will pay a fee comparable to the state rate at a hotel.
In the meantime, N.C. State and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte are the only universities left in Cannon Village.
UNC-Chapel Hill and UNC-Greensboro, as well as N.C. Central and N.C. A&T State universities, have moved across the street to the massive brick UNC Nutrition Research Building.
N.C. State expects to move into a similar building with Dole Food Co. in early October.
UNC-Charlotte soon will relocate to the copper-domed Core Laboratory Building.
The campus officially opens Oct. 20.
N.C. State also has made final offers to four scientists poised to become the first research faculty at the Fruit & Vegetable Science Institute in Kannapolis, business director Tara Vogelien said.
The faculty will include a leafy vegetable breeder, strawberry breeder, applied molecular geneticist and postharvest physiologist.
The fruit and vegetable institute expects to create about 60 new jobs over the next year, Vogelien said.