NCRC History
The NCRC is located in the city of Kannapolis, just north of Charlotte. In the 20th century, Kannapolis was home to Cannon Mills, the largest manufacturer of sheets and towels in the world. At its peak, the mill employed almost 25,000 people. Building on that legacy, the 350-acre NCRC sits on the former Cannon Mills site in downtown Kannapolis.
Textile Town
JW Cannon built the mill on 808 acres that he bought in 1906. The mill opened for operations in 1908. The "model mill town" of Kannapolis was built around the mill growing to include 1,600 houses built for employees, a YMCA, movie theater, daycare center and hospital. The village of Kannapolis continued to grow incorporating as a city in 1984.
In 1982, Pacific Holding Company, which was owned by David Murdock, the founder and visionary behind the NCRC, purchased Cannon Mills Company and surrounding property. In 1986, Pacific Holding Company sold the bed and bath operations of Cannon Mills to Fieldcrest Mills forming Fieldcrest Cannon. Murdock retained the real estate surrounding the mills.
The mill was bought by Pillowtex Corporation of Dallas in 1997. Bankrupt, Pillowtex closed on July 30, 2003. The closure was the largest one-day layoff in North Carolina history displacing 7,650 people nationwide, 4,340 of whom lived in Kannapolis and the surrounding counties. The closure of the mill spurred Murdock's interest in returning productive industry and jobs to Kannapolis.
Biotech Center
Murdock purchased the former mill site at auction in December 2004. In September 2005, Murdock announced in front of the mill's former headquarters the plans for a $1.5 billion scientific and economic revitalization project called the North Carolina Research Campus. Those attending included US Senator Elizabeth Dole, US Senator Richard Burr, US Congressman (and great-grandson of Kannapolis' founder JW Cannon) Robin Hayes, and then-UNC President Molly Corbett Broad, as well as many other political and academic leaders from the state of North Carolina.
The NCRC progressed quickly with the groundbreaking for the first building, the 311,000-square-foot David H. Murdock Core Laboratory, held on February 23, 2006. A month later, DH Griffin, Inc. of Greensboro coordinated the first implosion of the former mill buildings, which was reported to be the second largest implosion in US history. In all, six million square feet of antiquated textile buildings were imploded or demolished to make way for the NCRC.
In another gala ceremony on September 24, 2007, outside the David H. Murdock Core Lab, a $35 million gift from Murdock to Duke University was announced to fund the Measurement to Understand the Reclassification of Disease in Cabarrus and Kannapolis. The Duke-led M.U.R.D.O.C.K. Study is an intergenerational study much like the world-renowned Framingham Study in Massachusetts.
Since that time, the NCRC has expanded to include universities, business partners, over 130 employees, and five buildings- the David H. Murdock Core Laboratory, the Plants for Human Health Institute, the Nutrition Research Institute, the Rowan-Cabarrus Community College Biotechnology Training Center, and the LabCorp Biorepository. Future plans for the campus include additional wetlab, office space, medical office space, a conference center, wellness center, retail area, and housing.