?? BLASTOFF IN K-TOWN - PART 1 ??

ERWIN 2024 - 15th Edition

APRIL 14

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I remember vividly the day the mill came down.

I was in 8th grade sitting in the band room at Kannapolis Middle School. Ms. Graham had the television on. The school year had just started and everyone was on edge. We watched the tv and felt the tremors beneath our feet as the remnants of Cannon Mills crumbled to the ground.

The town that we natives had known for all of our lives was gone.

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Three years earlier, Cannon Mills had shut its doors for good. Employees were woken by the familiar sound of the steam whistle and showed up to work only to find the gates locked. Kannapolis had officially fallen victim to the exportation of manufacturing industries in the name of cheaper labor. Nearly 5,000 mill employees lost their livelihoods instantly (at that time, the largest single layoff event in North Carolina history).

What many newcomers don’t know about Kannapolis is that the city was extremely centralized. Cannon Mills —? in the most literal sense — was Kannapolis.?

When James W. Cannon purchased the land that became Kannapolis’ Cannon Mills, there was essentially just farmland in the area. As business began to boom, an entire town formed around the mill. The vast majority of homes within a 2-3 mile radius of the mill were built and owned by the mill and leased to employees. J.W. Cannon (and later his son, Charles) built churches, schools, the YMCA, police and fire stations, and other amenities around town. The people of Kannapolis depended on Cannon Mills with their lives. Social science refers to this state of affairs as “paternalism”.

In fact, “Kannapolis” wasn’t even considered an official city until its incorporation in 1984, 13 years after Charles Cannon’s death in 1971.

All of this to say that when Cannon Mills shut down in 2003 and was demolished in 2006, Kannapolis had lost its very identity.

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I remember the dedication ceremony of the Core Lab building in 2008. Billionaire investor David Murdock’s team had laid out an elaborate plan for the North Carolina Research Campus (NCRC), the new tenants of the former Cannon Mills site. It was a message of hope to a town that had been devastated and left aimless following the mill’s closure. There was the promise of new jobs and opportunities. A rebirth of the downtown district.

Then the recession hit.

Development of NCRC stalled. Businesses that had been stationed in downtown Kannapolis for decades were forced out of business due to exorbitant rent and a now unreliable consumer base. Longtime citizens of Kannapolis had already been burnt by the mill. The recession poured on to the misery. Over the next several years, Kannapolis became a ghost town.

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Fast forward to 2015.?

The Kannapolis City Council, after years of failed promises from developers and investors, decided to take on an enormous gamble.

In September, the City Council closed on a public purchase of downtown Kannapolis from David Murdock. They presented a comprehensive redevelopment plan with the ultimate goal of attracting businesses and investment back to the city. The idea was that Kannapolis could be rebuilt from the middle out, starting with downtown and expanding to other areas of the city.

Kannapolis was down to its last breath, but at least the people of Kannapolis had? their fate in their own hands.

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In another daring move, the City Council proposed the construction of a new Minor League baseball stadium right in the middle of downtown. There was already an existing team and stadium in Kannapolis stationed off of Lane Street a few miles down the road. Why not just renovate the existing one?

For a town with so many desperate needs, was a new baseball stadium downtown really the most pressing issue?

I remember attending the City Council meeting for the stadium proposal. Many citizens were up in arms about the idea of the new ballpark. Of all the things that the City Council could address with the millions of dollars it planned to invest in the project, a new stadium was the furthest thing from the minds of citizens who had recently been left out in the cold by major business decisions. It would be the ultimate betrayal if the City Council failed its people directly.?

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I remember the “Big Reveal” ceremony at the Gem Theater in 2019. A new stadium had been built downtown and was in its last phases of construction. The City had opened a new streetscape downtown with a few new businesses open and others promised to arrive soon. The Kannapolis Intimidators Minor League baseball team were in their last year of existence as both a brand and at Intimidators Stadium off of Lane Street. They would be relocating downtown with a new name and look.?

In many ways, the team’s rebranding from the Intimidators to the Cannon Ballers was an ushering in to a new era — not just for the team, but for the City.

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In this account of Kannapolis’ revitalization, I have left out an enormous amount of detail for the sake of brevity. There’s so much more that went into the transformation of the City than what I am even aware of.

That said, I am so grateful to the City and its people for not accepting the fate of obscurity. It took a lot of risk and a ton of vision to reach this new “boom” period in Kannapolis’ history.

Through everything, I am so proud to call Kannapolis home.

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I’ve labeled this entry “Part 1” because there is so much more I want to unpack in future posts about our City. I hope that I do the story of Kannapolis justice over time, and I hope that you all find it either informative or enjoyable to read about.

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Happy Sunday, my friends! ????