Indeed, the entire state will benefit if and when the North Carolina Research Campus takes shape the way property owner David Murdock and university officials have envisioned it.

Kannapolis will shed its small-town feel and mill-town image, but not its heritage — never its heritage. The city is here because James Cannon envisioned a mill village that would produce high-quality goods and move the local agrarian economy into the Industrial Age. That was the cutting edge at the dawn of the 20th century. The company he and his heirs built employed thousands — Plant 1 alone was a town unto itself. The result is a city with a strong population base and an excellent location.

David Murdock will rank up there with the Cannons when it comes to visionaries who have shaped this city, region and state. Once it is fully built and operational, the N.C. Research Campus that the university and Murdock's Dole Foods are planning will move Kannapolis from the faded Industrial Age into the Information Age — forming an economy centered on scientific knowledge and research, the cutting edge of the early 21st century.

This is a tremendous change, and fully realizing it will take time and inconvenience. Construction projects always do. If it works, though, this center will help Kannapolis rise from the ashes of textile manufacturing into a new realm, with new life.

Few current residents of Kannapolis are qualified to work as researchers in biotechnology, but each scientist will need a host of support personnel, and all those people will spawn industries and services to make this growing city run. The net gain could be 35,000 jobs over seven years. The city must start gearing up for the roads and public services this population will require.

Just as young people now flock to the Raleigh and Charlotte areas for jobs, they may eventually be drawn to Kannapolis for high-tech, cutting-edge jobs. Murdock is attempting nothing less than a revolution.