By Joanie Morris

Kannapolis Citizen

In the year since he took the job officially, City Manager Mike Legg has been busy.

Between filling up the last spaces in the Kannapolis Gateway Business Park and new developments like Kellswater Bridge and the new North Carolina Research Campus, it's been a balancing act.

And through it all, Legg said, the city's staff still has maintained a level of service to citizens.

"We have to continue to concentrate on improving," Legg said. "We can't (concentrate) so much focus on change and lose focus on what citizens want."

Legg, a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, is a Charlotte native. He and his wife, Kelly, have two children, Tyler, 13, and Rachel, 10. He became city manager of Kannapolis in October 2004.

With Legg's experience with urban growth and tenure as an employee for the Centralina Council of Governments in the agency's Hickory office , many believe Legg is more than qualified to lead the city into the next phase of growth.

Legg said each department in the city is working to find ways to continually make sure the existing citizens get the best service they can give. They have improved the Mayor's Youth Academy and have plans for a Citizen's Academy and citizen's survey.

"One of our biggest challenges is finding a way to improve what we've got, things like replacing aging water and sewer lines," Legg said. "Finding a balance between all this growth and change."

Legg took about an hour recently to talk to the Kannapolis Citizen about the future:

Q. What impact do you see the announcement by billionaire David Murdock having on Kannapolis?

"I think it's a complete economic transition. It's going to be a change in the way Kannapolis is viewed from the outside. It will be a change in the way our citizens view ourselves as a city. Kannapolis immediately becomes a critical part of the Charlotte economy. It becomes a key player in the Charlotte regional economy."

Q. What infrastructure challenges do you see with the new development?

"Part of the challenge is Mr. Murdock is a billionaire. Even if we invest some on the site, it will be minute compared to his investment."

Legg believes the city is in a good place to offer services such as water and sewer to the North Carolina Research Campus. When Pillowtex closed, the city lost a multi-million gallon user in one day, so now it has the capacity to give.

"The bigger challenge is going to be how we maximize this (development) citywide," he said.

Legg said there are easy paths for the city to take and then there are hard paths.

One of the easiest places for Kannapolis to make best use of the development is in the western part of the city. Since 2000, Legg said the city has invested $5.41 million in required water and sewer improvements and an additional $4 million in additional economic incentives, most in the western growth area.

"It was going to explode anyway," Legg said. "It was already occurring. Now, it will serve dual roles" of cushioning the growth from Charlotte and the research campus.

"The hard stuff is everything else," Legg said. That includes protecting and improving neighborhoods and creating gateways into and out of downtown Kannapolis.

Q. Do we have sufficient workforce and what will be done in training partnerships for training workforce?

"We're just touching the issues on that," Legg said. Because the city has had two years of retraining already, he feels like citizens are ahead of the game. "Collectively, we've made a lot of strides towards having people get their GEDs and English as a Second Language for non-English speaking citizens.

"We've got two more years" to get citizens ready, Legg said. "The first jobs really won't emerge until then."

Q. How will improved infrastructure and the newly trained workforce affect other areas of the city?

"If we do public improvements, presumably you'll have private investments," Legg said. Other areas of the city will improve to keep up with the downtown. "There's more job creation that comes, private investments, increased property values and overall image changes."

Because Murdock is concentrating on downtown, Legg said the city will get the a chance to look toward those areas of the city that have not gotten much attention in the past.

"One of the critical things is how we are viewed from the outside," Legg said, adding that quality of life improvements will help.

Q. What about naysayers of the proposed plan by Murdock? How does that affect the city?

Legg points to the Austin (Texas) Business Journal, which recently had an article about biotech incubators, which would foster job creation elsewhere.

"A lot of the naysayers, it's tagging that to state funding as incentives," Legg said. Rather than incentives, Legg prefers to think of the University of North Carolina System investment as just that — an investment. When the universities get to Kannapolis, Legg said he will think of it as an investment in the city by the state.

"Is that an incentive to the companies that locate here? I view it as an investment," he said.

But the incentives debate and image issue are really the only negative things he has heard, Legg said.

Many people are asking, "Why Kannapolis?"

"This is where people live, work, exercise and play, all of that on one campus. They can park their cars and not have to use them for a week. I don't know that that exists anywhere in the world. Some university situations are like that. It's a university development."

Legg said Kannapolis is attractive for this type of development because "we have affordable housing, attractive affordable housing. We have a beautiful downtown, and we're 25 to 30 minutes from downtown Charlotte. That's the difference. I am constantly amazed at how unfamiliar (outsiders) are with Kannapolis' location on a map."

Q. With Haas CNC Racing and a new spec building going up in the Kannapolis Gateway Business Park, are there plans for another business park?

"We are exploring alternatives for another business park. What role the city will play has yet to be defined. The next one we do, we may be involved in but with less risks."

Legg feels the Kannapolis Gateway Business Park has been a huge success in that the park has been built-out in only two years.

Q. Tell us about the Childress Klein development. What's that about?

"That's a big project. If the research campus wasn't on the table and underway, the Childress Klein development would clearly be the biggest project and have the biggest impact on the city. It's such a diverse project."

The project includes retail and office space, as well as manufacturing and distribution outlets.

"It's comprehensive and highly visible on Kannapolis Parkway," Legg said. "Childress Klein do nothing but quality."

Q. How has the partnership with the Cabarrus Regional Partnership gone? What are your opinion of pluses and minuses?

"I see nothing but positive. I talk with John Cox (president of the partnership) and his staff weekly," Legg said. "That didn't happen before. that constant communication. It is about communication and the Cabarrus Partnership is largely part of the success of getting Haas, Golden Gate Trailers and Artistic Frame ...

"I see no negatives. They have a sharp staff. We have funded them in a way that.. they ask for our opinion. They've done an incredible job in not playing favorites. Balancing their efforts to benefit all of the jurisdictions."

Legg said if there is a negative, it would be has the partnership with various cities strengthened or weakened the Chamber.

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Joanie Morris is editor of the Kannapolis Citizen. Contact her at 704-933-3450 or jmorris@kannapoliscitizen.com.