A phoenix rising from the ashes

When the mill was still standing, there was a lingering hope that someone would buy it and reopen it, said Cindy Huie.

“You didn’t want to lose that hope,” she said.

Lynne Scott Safrit would drive past the closed mill every day, going to and from work. She called her boss, David Murdock, by now the owner of Dole Food Company, the day the mill closed.

“He was surprised to find that the company was closing for good,” Safrit said. “Mr. Murdock loved the time he spent here. He enjoyed textiles.”

Fletcher Hartsell

Fletcher Hartsell knew something had to be done.

He also knew that Murdock still owned a lot of the property in downtown Kannapolis through his real estate firm, Atlantic American Properties. Murdock had kept many of the mill homes and had built his East-coast home on Kannapolis Lake, called Pity’s Sake Lodge.

Hartsell decided that it was time for Murdock to come back.

He talked with Safrit, Murdock’s right-hand woman in Kannapolis, in the days and weeks after the mill closed, about the idea of get him back. She suggested calling Murdock.

Meetings were held, both in Raleigh with legislators and in Kannapolis, Hartsell said. He started talking with Senate Majority Leader Marc Basnight of Manteo about ways to lure Murdock back to North Carolina. Hartsell and Safrit made trips, crossing the state, talking with economic development experts and ways to attract industry to Kannapolis.

Everyone had an idea for what to do with the mill property, Safrit said.

“There were a lot of people that looked at the property and said, ‘This would be great for this or a good opportunity for that kind of project,’ but nobody came up with the financial wherewithal to make something happen,” she said.

Through many conversations between Hartsell and Safrit, they convinced Murdock to come back to North Carolina and do something with the property. Hartsell came up with a name for this project—Project Phoenix.

“When the property was excluded from the main sale of Pillowtex, we watched it very closely to see what would happen,” Safrit said.

Murdock went to New York in December 2004 for the auction of the mill complex and won it for $6.4 million, a fraction of what he paid for it when he bought the company in 1982.

“He called me from New York and said, ‘Well, what are we going to do with it?’ He said, ‘I can’t tell them I don’t know, but I can say one thing, that I want to create jobs for the people in that community,’” Safrit said.

Murdock was keenly aware of human health and the effects food can have on one’s body. His wife, Gabrielle, died of cancer in 1985. Murdock told a Kannapolis crowd in 2007 that he took her to the best doctors and clinics in the world to try and save her, but nothing helped. He knew then he would devote his fortune to the understanding and eradication of disease, he said. 

David Murdock

Murdock consulted with his friend and science advisor, Andrew Conrad, a geneticist whose work in HIV research gave him worldwide connections in the scientific community, about the possibilities.
When Murdock came to North Carolina in January 2005, he scheduled a series of meetings with state political and educational leaders, Hartsell said.

During that time, Murdock and Safrit sat down and came up with a list of things that could be done with the property.

“I still have that list,” Safrit said. “We started thinking about what we could do with that piece of property and create the kind of jobs that wouldn’t go away.”

In the early days of the project, Murdock was thinking about biotechnology. At first, the idea was to create a business incubator, where small start-ups could get the money, the lab space and the support to grow their research and ideas into a marketable businesses.

But, as time went by, Murdock met more researchers, education leaders and life science business leaders in the state, and the idea grew from a business incubator into something bigger: A campus that brought the best scientific minds in the state to Kannapolis to study human nutrition, Safrit said.

“It took the Research Triangle Park 20 years to get going,” Safrit said. “Mr. Murdock wanted to do something to jump start this community. We couldn’t afford to wait 20 years.”

Hartsell took Murdock to meet Gov. Mike Easley in Raleigh in Jan. 2005.

“He and the governor talked about creating jobs,” Hartsell said. “And the governor said, ‘Mr. Murdock, I wish I could clone your eighth grade teacher.’ ”

Easley referred to Murdock’s educational background — he never finished the ninth grade.

Then Murdock and Hartsell met with then UNC President Molly Broad and leaders from the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Public Health at a lunch meeting in Chapel Hill.

“They got interested then,” Hartsell said. “The folks at the School of Public Health put together a project proposal for him to participate with Dole. By the time Mr. Murdock got back to California two days later, it was sitting on his desk.”

Throughout that year, other UNC schools came on board and Murdock met with state leaders.

“He’s probably met half the Senate and half of the House,” Hartsell said. “If you think about it, this project is not successful unless you show that it extends beyond the borders of Kannapolis. It helps if other people buy into the credibility of this project and of Mr. Murdock.”

Murdock pieced together his ideas for a research hub and, through those meetings, was able to cement his grand vision.

“The credit goes to Mr. Murdock,” Hartsell said. “He took these kernels of ideas and put it all together.”

David Murdock announces the North Carolina Research Campus on Sept. 12, 2005.

Murdock announced the North Carolina Research Campus in front of the old mill offices on Sept. 12, 2005. At a gala announcement, along with state and federal officials, Murdock said the research campus would “be able to create sustainable, better-paying jobs for the people of Kannapolis and the region…”

Murdock’s announcement was met with surprise and some trepidation about his motives. Older mill workers remembered Murdock from when he owned Cannon Mills. And Murdock knew he had to win people over.

At the topping off ceremony of the Core Lab in 2006, Murdock said he had to smile to himself when he heard people talk about the research campus with skepticism.

“The day it was announced that Murdock was going to buy the property and build the research center, everybody said, ‘Oh yeah, right,’” Cindy Huie said. “No one would believe that, until they started tearing it down and grinding it up and hauling it away.”

Huie said she trusted Murdock, though.

“Murdock is a man of his word, and he has the money to back it up,” she said. “I thoroughly believed it.”

Others began to believe Murdock, as well, as demolition of the mill took on more steam. Soon after, Town Lake was drained and the mill complex came down building by building. Considered the third largest demolition project in the nation’s history, D.H. Griffin Wrecking Co. of Greensboro, the same company that helped clean up Ground Zero in New York after the attacks on 9/11, imploded the 5.5 million square feet of building with careful efficiency and brute force.

Sticking with his theme of health and nutrition, Murdock offered Griffin an extra $100,000 if he would drop 30 pounds in six months. Griffin took on Murdock’s challenge, losing the weight and accepting his check.

On Aug.10, 2006, the iconic smokestacks that once stood towering over the mill were toppled. Hundreds of people came out to watch them come down — many of them former mill workers. There were cheers, and there were tears.

Click here for a larger view.

The mill was gone.

While construction crews worked on the massive four-story core lab building, work behind the scenes began to determine the scope of the research campus’ mission. Scientists met with Murdock to give him their “wish list” of scientific equipment they would like to see in the core lab, which included the world’s first and only 950 mHz nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer used to study the behavior of molecules on the sub-atomic level. The UNC system labs defined their missions and moved into temporary offices in Cannon Village.

When Erskine Bowles was appointed president of the UNC system, he and Murdock became quick friends because both men were venture capitalists and both knew how big projects like this work, Hartsell said.

“Erskine got into the mechanics of it [the research campus],” Hartsell said. “He could see the vision. He has been probably the single-biggest cheerleader in state government for the project.”

Murdock attended Bowles’ inauguration ceremony at UNC Greensboro. After the ceremony, Bowles and Murdock went off by themselves and hashed out the details of the UNC lease agreement for the lab buildings on the campus, Hartsell said.

Duke University had also been mentioned as a partner in the research campus, but its involvement wasn’t clear early on. Insiders knew it would be a project revolving around translational medicine — the study of turning research into patient care— but the challenge was defining the scope.

In a dramatic announcement ceremony in Sept. 2007, Murdock and Duke said the research campus would be home to the MURDOCK Study — a longitudinal study that promised to “rewrite the textbook of medicine” by looking at the individual genetic causes of human disease. Murdock offered a $35 million grant to jump start the project. Duke researchers hope to recruit residents in Kannapolis and Cabarrus County to participate.

Hartsell said he had broken up Project Phoenix into phases: Phoenix One was getting the mill property back, Phoenix Two was announcing the research campus and building the Core Lab. Phoenix Three is opening the Core Lab and getting the research campus up and running.

He also said he would not retire from public life until the research campus vision is realized.

The N.C. Research Campus’ core lab rises above the rubble of the former mill. James Nix photo

Epilogue: Grappling with the past, looking to the future
Transformations are painful, and Kannapolis has been through several.

“When I was in training in No. 2 weave room, you couldn’t hear anyone. The noise was deafening. There was dust and lint all over the place, but that was the way it was,” Ken Geathers said. “Being a linthead was endearing to us. It meant we were cotton folks.”

And being a “linthead” in Cannon Mills meant you were a part of something special. Mill workers took pride in the product they made. And they were loyal to Charlie Cannon. When he died in 1971, the family’s mystique began to crumble. The paternalistic protector that sheltered Kannapolis from the world was gone, and the culture he facilitated began to change.

When Fieldcrest Mills came in 1986, the Cannon era of optimistic industriousness was over. Everyone woke up to the reality of a new and foreboding world where global market forces controlled all aspects of textile production. No longer could a magnate like Charles Cannon control the market and protect his workers from globalization. When Pillowtex came along in 1999, it was all but over for the mill that built Kannapolis.

With the first part of the research campus rising on the old Pillowtex site, there is hope that new life will come to the former company town. With an investment of $1.5 billion of his own money, plus long-term commitments from the University of North Carolina and Duke University, David Murdock has made many promises. Among those, he said, the research campus “will be the greatest campus in the world, with the greatest scientific equipment and the greatest scientific minds” and will bring high-paying jobs back to the city.

But the legacy of the mill still resonates with the people of Kannapolis.

“It didn’t break up the community,” Ruth Crisco said. “It made us a little stronger — not to depend on a job.”

Former mill workers still get together at reunions. They see each other in the grocery stores. They still call or write and catch up with each other.

“You go to Hardee’s in the morning if you want to see them,” Thelma Honeycutt said. “That way, you keep up with the ones that passed away or the ones that are s ick. You send them a card to let them know you still thinking about them.”

The family atmosphere created by Cannon Mills was one that seems to be lost in the modern workforce, said Councilman Richard Anderson.

“I can tell you truthfully, in my years working at Cannon Mills, I could have never met any nicer folks,” Anderson said, “people with character and integrity and who you could rely on in terms of friendship. Things sort of changed. People are such in a rush … and there is not much sense of a personal relationship.”

The “can-do” Cannon attitude is still embedded in Kannapolis, but a new challenge awaits the city with the research campus. New faces and new ideas are coming — and in ways Kannapolis has never seen before.

“I see new blood coming in here as a great stimulant for our community and our kids,” Cindy Huie said. “Our children in middle school and high school now are realizing that there is not a job waiting for them at graduation.”

The challenge now is to build a future on a foundation as solid as the one on which the mill once stood.

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