Having lived in Kannapolis, NC for most of my natural life; I'm pleased to see the changes that are coming. For years we've been the bastard step-children of this area. Full of uneducated "lint heads" and lacking in sophistication. Cannon/Fieldcrest/Pillowtex or whatever it was at any particular point dominated the landscape and anyone who didn't have a relative working in the mill wasn't considered a native. But my friend, the times they are a-changin', to quote Bob Dylan.

And boy, is the landscape changing. A $1 billion dollar redevelopment project by David Murdoch and his company, Dole Foods, to make Kannapolis a national, bio-tech research facility is underway. (unless you live a cave, you know that already) Educational participants include Duke University, N.C. A&T University, N.C. State, The University of North Carolina Charlotte and The University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. The facility will eventually employ directly over 4,000 people.

Figure the average household in the U.S. for 2006 was 2.61 people according to the U.S. Census Bureau. 4,000 x 2.61=10,440 people. According to city-data.com the estimated population of Kannapolis in July of 2006 was 40,223. That is an increase of 25.9%. Of course, this doesn't take into account the number of people that will be brought to area to handle the increased population. Restaurants, hotels, various service industries not to mention the number of new city employees that will be required to handle the load will push the population up further. Keep in mind that many of these new folks will be moving into the area from other places due to the specialized training and experience required for these new jobs.

Let's extrapolate the numbers a little more. The Indianapolis Private Industry Council did a study in 2006 that showed that for every manufacturing job created in the state of Indiana, 3.76 more jobs were created. Now, of course, these aren't manufacturing jobs, they are research jobs and this isn't Indiana. However, if you assume that the number is high and divide it by half, you still get 1.88 new jobs per new employee. (3.76/2=1.88) Take the 4,000 new employees and multiply that times 1.88 and you get 7,520 new jobs. (4,000 x 1.88=7,520) Now consider that this new workforce that is in support of the actual bio-tech worker force doesn't require the sophisticated training or experience and that only half of them can actually be hired locally. (We'll be conservative here) That would be 7,520/2=3,760. Add that to the bio-tech workers and you have 7,760 people actually coming to Kannapolis to work every day if they don't live here already. Can you imagine people actually commuting to Kannapolis? Weird.

Anyway, the numbers of actual new employees coming to the area would look like this:

4,000 new bio-tech workers + 7,520 new support workers = 11,520 new jobs WOW!                                           Remember, only half of those support workers will be coming into the area. The rest we will assume will already be from here. That is 3,760. So, if you want to determine the additional population growth, you take the number of biotech workers plus the number of support workers and multiply it by the average household size. (4,000 + 3,760 = 7,760 x 2.61 = 20,254 new people in Kannapolis!) Population in July of 2006 was 40,223. Take 20,254 and divide it by 40,223 and you get a population growth of 50.3%! Do any of you realtors want to do business in Kannapolis yet?