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Tuesday, July 30, 2013 | 75¢
Johnson professes innocence to Huntersville officer
Suspect in murder of Shirley
Pierce claims she had alibi
By Shavonne Potts
spotts@salisburypost.com
day of the murder and the
day before.
Pierce was found dead
on the morning of July 23 at
her Kannapolis home by her
fiance, Chuck Reeves. Pierce
was found in a bathtub and
had been stabbed numerous
times. Johnson was charged
in her death about 12 hours
later.
The warrants said it appeared Pierce had been beaten about the head and upper
body. The warrants also said
Investigators say Marlene Johnson approached a
Huntersville Police officer
the day Shirley Goodnight
Pierce was found dead in her
home, claiming she didn’t kill
Pierce and had an alibi.
A series of search warrants filed Monday and issued by Rowan County Sheriff’s investigators detail the
whereabouts of Johnson the
Pierce had defensive cuts
and wounds to her hands,
consistent with someone who
fought back against an attacker. When Reeves arrived
at the home the garage door
was up, but the garage door to
the house was locked. When
Reeves entered the Evandale
Road home he found Pierce
and backed out of the home
to call 911.
Search warrants said
there were blood stains on
the floor of the master bedroom and a substance similar
to bleach also on the floor. A
bloody footprint was found
on a door mat leading to the
garage door. Investigators
believe the other blood stains
Johnson
Pierce
that were found throughout
the house belonged to the
suspect.
The search warra nts
include interviews investigators had with Johnson’s
friends and neighbors.
The warrants also say
Johnson’s estranged husband, Ervin, had a restraining order against his wife.
Ervin Johnson told a detective his wife had assaulted
him in December 2008, cutting him on the hand, and he
felt she was capable of more
violence.
Pierce had also taken out
a restraining order against
Johnson, but it expired in
June.
Ervin Johnson
Ervin Johnson is the
president and CFO of Tuscarora Yarns. Pierce worked
as Johnson’s executive assistant. Marlene Johnson believed her husband was having an affair with Pierce, although there has been no evi-
— Pillowtex 10 years later —
Then vs. now
NC Research Campus behind schedule but picking up steam
dence to suggest the claims
Johnson made were true.
Authorities say Johnson
told them his wife was possessive and jealous. He said
her violent behavior escalated in the last 10 years. Ervin Johnson said he recently
sent his wife a text message
saying he needed to move,
change his phone number
and live in a place where no
one knew him. Marlene Johnson accused her husband of
wanting to move in with
Pierce. The warrant does
not say when Johnson sent
the text message to his wife.
See Johnson, 2A
E. Spencer
fires police
chief
Westmoreland relieved
of duties after meeting
to discuss Post article
By Nathan Hardin
nhardin@salisburypost.com
JON C. LAKEY / SALISBURY POST FILE PHOTO
A file aerial photograph of construction at the NC Research Campus in Kannapolis in 2008.
By Emily Ford
eford@salisburypost.com
K A N NA P OL IS — A lthough some people suspected it, the news still came as
a shock.
Ten years ago today,
4,300 stunned area residents
learned they had lost their
jobs in the largest singleday layoff in North Carolina
history and the biggest textile shutdown in the nation’s
history.
On July 30, 2003, Pillowtex Corp. announced it
would cease operations after a failed post-bankruptcy
reorganization.
In a single, swift announcement, the towel-andsheet textiles maker eliminated 7,650 jobs at its North
American factories and
warehouses, including nearly
5,000 jobs in North Carolina.
Rowan County lost two mills
and more than 700 jobs. Concord lost a mill and 600 jobs.
Kannapolis lost more than
1,500 jobs as a way of life
ended in what was once the
largest unincorporated city
in the United States. In one
day, the town built around
the textile mill founded as
Cannon Mills in 1905 by J.W.
Cannon lost its biggest employer, taxpayer and water
See NCRC, 6A
[|xbIAHD y0 0 1rzu
EAST SPENCER — East Spencer town officials fired Police Chief Darren Westmoreland on Monday, a week after a Post report
detailed officers’ accusations against the embattled chief.
Board members voted
unanimously to oust Westmoreland during a special meeting at town hall Monday night.
They also appointed an acting
chief, effective Tuesday.
According to a public notice, council members met
Westmoreland to discuss the Post’s investigative reports that detailed
current and former officers’
accusations against Westmoreland. Those allegations ranged from allegedly falsified time
sheets to calling off assistance during a homicide investigation.
Officers told the Post Westmoreland also
failed to properly investigate the shooting of
a 2-year-old in December.
Following the roughly two-hour, closed-session meeting, Mayor Barbara Mallet declined
See Chief, 14A
Schools will get
last year’s funding
as mediation
continues
By Karissa Minn
kminn@salisburypost.com
JON C. LAKEY / SALISBURY POST FILE PHOTO
Pillowtex Plant 1 employee Donald Auten listens intently to the speakers during the press
conference on July 30, 2003 announcing the closing of the plant.
Displaced workers now have access to more
local resources after Pillowtex closure
By Karissa Minn
kminn@salisburypost.com
KANNAPOLIS — When
Randy Keller looks out the
window of his office at the
North Carolina Research
Campus, he can see 10 years
Today’s forecast
85º/ 67º
Partly cloudy
Deaths
into the past.
As a 24-year employee of
Cannon Mills and then Pillowtex, Keller remembers
well what the Kannapolis
property used to look like
when it housed a textile mill.
But Keller, 51, who now
Clarence A. Gwyn
Eric M. Feamster
W. Roy Creamer
Elizabeth M. Robinson
manages the research campus facilities of N.C. State
University, also sees the
future in the new buildings
around him. Eight universities and several biotechnol-
SALISBURY — County commissioners
have agreed to give the local school system
the same amount of money as they did last
year, but budget talks aren’t over yet.
After nearly five hours of closed mediation
sessions Monday evening, the Rowan-Salisbury Board of Education and Rowan County
Board of Commissioners voted to recess the
meeting until 5 p.m. on Aug. 5. The location
is yet to be determined.
The two boards met separately with their
attorneys on the third night of negotiations.
Mediator Willis Whichard, a lawyer who has
served both as an appellate judge and as a
state legislator, went back and forth between
them to relay each offer and counter-offer.
Commissioners came back into open ses-
See Resources, 6A
Jack H. Curlee
Hazel T. Lester
Louise T. Huneycutt
Dorothy W. Leonard
Contents
See Funding, 13A
Classifieds
Comics
Crossword
Deaths
Food
7B
12B
12B
4A
10A
Horoscope
Opinion
Sports
TV/Bridge
Weather
13B
12A
1B
13B
14B
6A n TUESDAY, JULY 30, 2013
SALISBURY POST
NCRC
Continued from 1A
consumer.
Some compared the
plant closure to the aftermath of a natural disaster.
Local and state government officials scrambled to
help thousands of people,
many without even a high
school diploma, find other
jobs or retraining, maintain health insurance, keep
their homes and put food
on the table.
“It was surreal,” City
Manager Mike Legg said.
“It was like the community
that we were living in just
immediately changed.”
KARISSA MINN / SALISBURY POST
Randy Keller, who lost his job when the Pillowtex plant in Kannapolis closed 10 years ago, now
works at the N.C. Research Campus on the same property. He can point out his office window to
where the mill’s various facilities used to sit.
Resources
Continued from 1A
ogy companies now have a
presence there.
He said he would like the
research campus to grow
more quickly, but he chalks
up the slow growth to the
economy.
“A lot of the community’s
still bitter over the mill
shutting down,” Keller said.
“But that’s changing times.
I’ve learned that you’ve got
to change. If you stay in one
spot, you’re going to sit there
and regret not moving on. ...
You’ve got to expand your
knowledge, move on and
meet new people.”
Keller first went to work
at Cannon Mills, which later
became Pillowtex, in 1979.
Keller first worked in the
garage, maintaining the
tractor-trailer fleet and forklifts. In 1996, he moved to the
Fluor Daniels machine shop
as a welder.
“We didn’t just work at
one plant,” Keller said. “We
traveled to all the plants Pillowtex owned.”
Keller had been out on
vacation when the Pillowtex
closure was announced in
July 2003.
“I was actually out getting
my truck inspected, and the
guy who inspected my truck
told me I didn’t have a job
anymore,” he said.
Keller said losing his job
didn’t come as a total surprise to him. He had recently
noticed that money was getting tighter at work, so he
and his wife had started saving as much money as they
could — just in case.
T h at s av i ngs helpe d
Keller attend Rowan-Cabarrus Community College to
study motorsports management.
“It’s a good program,” he
said. “It helped me a lot, and
it carried over to what I’m
doing now.”
ggg
Nearby, housed in the
Rowan-Cabarrus Community College research campus
building, the R3 (“R-cubed”)
Center works to help people
like Keller every day.
Unemployed local residents can meet with a career
coach, attend free workshops, get job skills training
and connect with employers
looking to hire.
It’s actually the closure of
the Pillowtex plant in Kannapolis that made the R3
center possible.
About 3,900 workers in
Rowan and Cabarrus were
displaced, said Jea nnie
Moore, vice president of
advancement and corporate
education at the college.
Rowan-Cabarrus enrolled
about 52 percent of them in
retraining programs.
Moore, who has been
working with the college
since 1977, said the local
area had already started
changing by 2003. The regional textile industry was in
decline, she said, and other
mills had shut down already.
But the closure of Pillowtex impacted more people
— more workers and their
families — than ever before.
“We were the largest dislocation in the history of the
Southeastern United States...
there may be others since
then that were larger than
that,” Moore said. “Although
I knew the community college did important and valuable work, I didn’t realize
until it happened here at
that magnitude the level of
responsibility we had.”
JOEY BENTON / SALISBURY POST FILE PHOTO
Pillowtex workers leave the textile plant in Kannapolis in 2003
prior to the official announcement that the plant will close.
“A lot of the
community’s
still bitter over
the mill shutting
down. But that’s
changing times.
I’ve learned that
you’ve got to
change.”
Randy Keller
Moore, a lifelong native of
Rowan County, said many of
those who lost their jobs at
Pillowtex were her former
neighbors and classmates,
parents of her son’s friends
and even students she once
taught in public school.
“They depended on the
industry for a long period of
time, and it suddenly went
away,” Moore said. “It was
a little overwhelming. At
that point, I realized exactly
how powerful education is
in terms of helping people to
rediscover themselves, make
progress and move on to that
next opportunity out there.”
She said many of the unemployed workers were people in their 60s and 70s who
were trying to build a bridge
to retirement and social security.
The community college
became a resource center
for the dislocated workers
needing assistance. It set up
a presence at the mill site in
partnership with the N.C.
Employment Security Commission — now the N.C. Division of Workforce Solutions
— to help them find new jobs.
Nonprofit groups, faithbased organizations, churches and the local Departments
of Social Services offered resources and guidance to the
workers. Other area community colleges also sent representatives to help.
Moore said Congressman
Robin Hayes even mobilized
a group of officials out of
Washington, D.C., to help the
unemployed workers.
“One of the lessons we
learned is folks didn’t want
to go far for services,” Moore
said. “And if they went, it
could be intimidating to go
to a college campus.”
That’s when the idea for
the R3 Center was born.
The college received
funding to build the center
when the research campus
began development. Moore
said it opened its doors in
2007 and has served more
than 10,000 folks since then.
Carolyn Helms, special
assistant in corporate and
continuing education at the
R3 Center, is a former Pillowtex employee, but she
lost her job there about six
months before it closed. She
was already attending the
community college when she
started working there to give
administrative support during retraining efforts.
“It has been phenomenal
what the college was able to
do,” Helms said, “not only
for Pillowtex people, but
for those laid off at Food
Lion, Phillip-Morris, the
motorsports industry and the
healthcare industry.”
Many of those workers
have been retrained through
the college in different
skilled trades, information
technology, phlebotomy and
nurse aide programs. The
R3 center continues to offer
free monthly workshops to
those who are out of work,
tailoring its programs to the
changing needs of the community.
ggg
By the time Keller completed his two-year associate’s degree program at Rowan-Cabarrus, his unemployment benefits had run out. As
he continued to search for a
new full-time position, he
made some money working
odd jobs with the skills he
had used at Pillowtex.
In 2007, he finally found a
job at a local wheel and tire
store. It was only open 18
months before the toppling
economy brought it down.
About a month or two later, Keller’s fortune changed,
and he received two job offers at the same time. One
was from N.C. State University, and the other was from
the Craftsman truck team.
Keller said he has always
had an interest in motorsports, and with his new degree, he was ready to finally
work in the field.
But after the last few
years of uncertainty, Keller
knew that a truck team that
depended on sponsorship
money wouldn’t give him the
job security he needed.
Keller chose to come to
work at the research campus in November 2008, and
he said he’s glad he did.
“Learning things has always been a desire for me,”
he said. “If I see something,
I want to know how it works.
If it doesn’t work, I want to
know why. If it breaks, I want
to know why it breaks.”
In his current job, Keller
is in charge of facilities management and operations upkeep. Technically, Keller’s
position is one of a supervisor, but he still prefers
hands-on work.
“A lot of things, I’ll take
upon doing myself instead
of calling upon the maintenance guys,” he said. “I like
it here. I’m hoping its my last
job.”
For more information
about the R3 center, visit
www.rccc.edu/r3/.
Contact reporter Karissa
Minn at 704-797-4222.
Dramatic changes
The change was dramatic and sudden.
“We’d heard rumblings
of things happening, but
I don’t think anybody
dreamed it would be that
fast,” Legg said. “It was
jaw-dropping. How could
that happen?”
Pillowtex officials said
cheap foreign goods flooding the United States market ultimately spelled the
company’s undoing. ThenGov. Mike Easley blamed
“destructive federal trade
policies” for the slow demise of textiles.
The shutdown left Rowan and Cabarrus counties
with a network of mammoth, shuttered mills,
most notably the sprawling Plant One in the heart
of Kannapolis. While the
community spent much of
the first year after the closure dealing with the devastation and social impact
of mass unemployment,
city officials began turning their attention to the
empty mill.
“All we could think of
was grass and weeds growing up, decay and fires,”
Legg said. “What do we
do with this massive, massive piece of property in
our downtown?”
In late 2004, David Murdock, a California billionaire familiar to Kannapolis residents, attended an
auction in New York and
bought the abandoned
Plant One for $6.4 million.
Murdock, a real estate mogul and owner of Dole Food
Co., had owned Cannon
Mills for four years in the
1980s and still owns most
of downtown Kannapolis,
then called Cannon Village.
In September 20 05,
Murdock announced an
ambitious plan to demolish Plant One and build
in its place a $1.5 billion
biotechnology hub called
the N.C. Research Campus. His vision included
dozens of university and
private partners working
in buildings covering the
350-acre campus to find
scientific breakthroughs
in health, nutrition and
agriculture.
Built by his real estate
development firm Castle &
Cooke, the biotech hub was
supposed to host 5,000 scientists by 2010, with thousands of other jobs created
by the demand for services
like restaurants and drug
stores. Murdock said he
wanted to put Kannapolis
residents back to work and
find a cure for cancer.
Today, 10 years after
the demise of Pillowtex
and five years after Murdock broke ground on his
“biopolis,” the campus has
struggled to meet expecta-
JON C. LAKEY / SALISBURY POST
A tour group stands on the ground floor of the David H. Murdock
Core Laboratory Building on the NC Research Campus in
Kannapolis. The center of the building has a dome that has the
largest hand painted mural on the underside in the Southeast.
JON C. LAKEY / SALISBURY POST FILE PHOTO
The large checkerboard-painted water tower that stood over
the former Cannon Mills plant was demolished in November of
2006.
See NCRC, 7A
As seen from the Main Steet near the old train depot, the steelwork proceeds on the Core Lab
in June of 2006.
TUESDAY, JULY 30, 2013 n 7A
SALISBURY POST
JON C. LAKEY / SALISBURY POST FILE PHOTO
David H. Murdock speaks at the North Carolina Research
Campus announcement celebration in Kannapolis in
September of 2005. His son Justin and former Sen. Elizabeth
Dole are also seen.
NCRC
Continued from 6A
tions and make a connection
with the community. The recession derailed numerous
construction and scientific
endeavors planned for the
campus, and Murdock continues to have to pump money
into the project — more than
$600 million so far — recently infusing his nonprofit
research institute with an additional $50 million.
Recession setbacks
she has strong prospects for
the remaining space.
Castle & Cooke plans to
break ground soon on the
Data Chambers building, and
Murdock has donated land to
the city of Kannapolis, which
plans to build a $28 million,
100,000-square-foot government center to house city hall
and the Kannapolis Police
Department on campus.
“There is definitely a lot of
momentum right now,” Safrit said. “A lot of things are
happening that weren’t happening when the recession
was forced upon us. I will
definitely say that we’re in a
building mode.”
Safrit said she’s talking to
Charlotte developers about
building a hotel on the campus, lured by the city’s plan
to include meeting space for
up to 300 people in the government center. Castle &
Cooke in the past six months
has changed to a strategy
of building speculative lab
space on the third floor of the
Core Lab and has signed several leases with undisclosed
tenants, Safrit said.
Only seven luxury homes
have sold in Irish Creek,
Castle & Cooke’s golf course
community established five years
ago. But more moderately priced townhomes at the new
Irish Glen attracted
a crowd at a recent
open house. One
unit sold, and developers have solid
leads on the remaining four
units with plans to construct
more, Safrit said.
Castle & Cooke has revived a plan to build multifamily housing on the former
Plant Four site, and Safrit
said she’s negotiating with
a North Carolina developer
known for similar projects
across the state.
Safrit, who with N.C. Sen.
Fletcher Hartsell (R-Cabarrus County) helped Murdock
come up with the vision for
the research campus, said
the endeavor is still considered a “start-up.”
“We will definitely look
back on this time as the infancy of a great project, a great
idea, a great collaboration,”
she said. “… With the universities and companies that we
have in place, it can’t help but
succeed.”
BRETT A. CLARK / SALISBURY POST FILE PHOTO
Construction crews work on demolishing the Pillowtex Plant in October of 2005.
pus — hasn’t happened as
easily as many had hoped.
Universities are accustomed
to defending their turf, and
scientific developments by
private companies are often
proprietary.
“There are so many silos,”
said Michael Todd, executive
director of the N.C. Research
Campus. “But we are working to break those down.”
Advocates point to the
largest collaboration on
campus to date, the Plant
Pathways Elucidation Project, or P2EP, as a model for
the future.
It’s a groundbreaking
$1.5 million program that
engages college students
from across North Carolina
in a first-of-its-kind education
and research endeavor.
The program teams university scientists, industry
leaders and college students,
who together will explore
plant pathways to answer
why and how plants like
fruits and vegetables benefit
human health. Project sponsors include Catawba College, Dole, General Mills,
the Cabarrus Economic
Development Corporation,
Duke Energy Foundation, the
Murdock Research Institute
and several universities.
“This shows the power of
the research campus,” Todd
said. “It’s what we were built
to do.”
Todd, who is the first to fill
the new executive director
role created by UNC General Administration last year,
The recession pushed
back completion of the campus by an undetermined
number of years.
“I wish I knew,” said
Lynne Scott Safrit, president of Castle & Cooke North
Carolina, who maintains that
WAYNE HINSHAW / SALISBURY POST FILE PHOTO
Murdock’s vision will come
Kannapolis City Council members and a few guests took a tour of the N.C. Research Campus
to fruition someday.
Core Lab in July of 2008. Lynn Scott Safrit of Castle and Cook, left, leads the tour.
About 600 people now
said the biggest challenge for Jennifer Woodford said. “The and cancer.
work on the campus, includthe N.C. Research Campus is reality is the science here is
“We’re hoping those deing the employees at the new
advancing at a breakneck velopments become valued
“telling our story.”
Cabarrus Health Alliance
“It’s not necessarily fund- pace.”
by the community over time,
across Dale Earnhardt Bouing, it’s not research. Those
along with the tangible proglevard. Developers estimate
things will continue to fall Unique in focus
ress,” Woodford said.
that about half live in Cabarinto place over time,” he said.
While the campus has
r u s a nd Rowa n
“It’s conveying the campus
counties, and the
A mong biote ch hubs improved communication
mission.”
rest live elsewhere. across the globe, the re- and marketing with a more
The N.C. General Assem- search campus is unique in user-friendly website, severBefore the rebly has maintained annual its focus on the intersection al online newsletters, email
cession, 17 compafunding of $23.5 million, of health, nutrition and ag- blasts and a stronger social
nies either had ofand campus researchers riculture. Researchers are media presence, Kannapolis
fices in Kannapolis
regularly make headlines trying to improve human still lacks a connection to the
or were planning to
with stories about discover- health by understanding huge, stately buildings and
set up shop. Some
ies like the cancer-fighting how plants work, creating well-manicured grounds.
never arrived and
potential of ginger and the healthier foods, uncovering
Mystery and aloofness
others departed, including
memory-boosting qualities the causes of disease and seem to surround the camhigh-profile pullouts by Pepof blueberries.
siCo and PPD, a Wilmingultimately, finding ways to pus, a reputation advocates
“I know people are looking keep people from develop- are working hard to dismanton-based contract research
at bricks and mortar as signs ing devastating conditions tle.
organization that left due
of progress,” spokeswoman like diabetes, heart disease
“The newness has worn
to the slow pace of developoff, and it’s just an ingrained
ment. Lovelace Respiratory
as part of the community,”
Research Institute left the
Legg said. “But people are
campus in 2010.
not connected to it yet.”
Companies like biotech inThe campus needs to do a
novator Anatomics and softbetter job helping the comware developer Red Hat that
munity understand what’s
signed on early as campus
going on inside the walls, he
partners are no longer listed
said.
on the campus website.
“It’s not just a real estate
Six corporations are curdeal anymore,” Legg said.
rently affiliated with the
“It’s a phenomenal research
campus: General M ills,
center, but I don’t think peoDole, Monsanto, Sensory
ple have latched onto that yet.
Spectrum, Lab Corp and
It’s no longer David Murdock
Data Chambers, a North
doing real estate, it’s much
State Communications commore complex.”
pany based in Winston-Salem
The complexity can make
that specializes in informait tough to communicate what
tion technology services and
exactly scientists, research
recently announced plans to
assistants and lab technimove into a 50,000 squarecians are doing and why it’s
foot data center Castle & Breaking down silos
important. Many of the scienCooke will build on campus.
JON C. LAKEY / SALISBURY POST tific methods practiced at the
The campus also includes
Collaboration — a key
campus, such as genomics,
researchers from eight uni- word used by supporters A current photo of the David H. Murdock Core Laboratory Building.
proteomics and metaboloversities, a branch of Row- when describing the cammics, are hard to pronounce,
an-Cabarrus Community
much less understand.
College, Cabarrus Health
W h i le the c a mpus is
Alliance, Carolinas Healthknown by one name, it’s accare System and the David
tually not one entity but fragH. Murdock Research Instimented groups with different
tute, which owns and operinitiatives, leaders, funding
ates the dome-topped Core
sources and goals.
Laboratory Building housing
Some of the backlash
some of the most advanced
against the campus came belife sciences equipment in
the world.
cause Murdock’s vision was
Despite the setbacks,
so grand, Legg said.
Murdock remains commitAfter the Pillowtex shutted to the campus and visdown, Murdock’s decision
its about once every other
to spend $60 million tearing
month, Safrit said. He still
down the abandoned mill
owns a home near Kannapowas itself a gift to the comlis dubbed Pity Sake Lodge
munity, something no other
and at age 90, shows no signs
private company would have
of slowing down his recruitdone and the city could not
ment efforts for the campus,
afford, Legg said. But some
she said.
people have been disappointed because the campus hasn’t
New momentum
grown as promised.
“The bar was set so high,
now it sort of looks like it’s
Safrit herself maintains
unfinished,” L egg said.
a sunny optimism about the
“We’ve had to recalibrate our
project and said she senses a
expectations.”
new momentum, pointing to
The Medical Plaza and
several recent developments
city government building
including the soft opening
will bring more people to
Monday of the Medical Plaza,
the campus, and they will bethe fifth building on campus.
JON C. LAKEY / SALISBURY POST
Carolinas Healthcare Sys- Appalachian State University is holding a study at the Human Performance Laboratory. The study involves seven athletes riding come increasingly connected
tem is leasing 60 percent of bicycles for an hour to test the dispersion of sweat by specific fabrics.
See NCRC, 14A
the facility, and Safrit said
14A n TUESDAY, JULY 30, 2013
CONTINUED
Chief
NCRC
Continued from 1A
Continued from 7A
and feel a sense of pride, Safrit said.
“I still have people ask me,
‘Are there people working in
those buildings?’” she said.
The campus already offers
many opportunities to get involved, including dozens of
research studies like Duke
University’s MURDOCK
Study that need residents as
subjects. Many of the trials
pay a stipend, like a recent endurance athlete study at the
Appalachian State University
Human Performance Lab.
“There are opportunities
for people to connect,” Safrit
said. “But people have to take
that first step.”
New generation
Ryan Dayvault’s greatgreat-grandfather, Paul
Dayvault, sold 72 acres of
farmland to J.W. Cannon for
$1,200 in 1905. It became Cannon Mills, then Pillowtex and
eventually the N.C. Research
Campus.
Dayvault, 27, works at the
campus. From the balcony
outside his second-story office at the UNC Nutrition
Research Institute, Dayvault
can look out over his ancestors’ land, which went from
cornfield to Town Lake to
Core Lab.
A new city councilman,
Dayvault says he’s playing a
role in what he calls the rebirth of Kannapolis. And he
believes the revitalization
of downtown Kannapolis is
crucial to the success of the
research campus.
The city and groups like
the newly formed Downtown
Kannapolis Inc. are working with Murdock’s property
management firm Atlantic
American Properties to bring
new life to the former village.
The village saw a 30 percent increase in new businesses over the previous year,
according to Atlantic American Properties. Cross Fit
JON C. LAKEY / SALISBURY POST
Dr. Mike Wang , genomics group leader at the Murdock Research
Institute, uses the lastest equipment in the genomics lab.
gym recently signed a lease,
as well as several offices. But
retailers have mostly pulled
out, and there are few places
to eat and drink other than
Murdock’s Restaurant 46.
Dayvault and others want
to bring downtown Kannapolis back to life, which he said
will alleviate negative feelings about the campus and restore the sense of community
that Kannapolis had when it
was a mill town.
Kannapolis, Dayvault said,
is on a 100-year cycle. The
mill was founded in 1905, and
the research campus in 2005.
The first towel was produced
at Cannon Mills in 1908, and
the campus opened in 2008.
Dayvault sees others
parallels as well, including
the skepticism both Cannon
and Murdock met when they
launched their respective
ventures.
For some, it’s been hard
to let go of the past, Dayvault
said.
“Whatever people think
about what was here then, we
have to face the reality that
this is here now, and we as a
city have to embrace this as
our biggest economic driver,”
he said.
It will take many years for
the campus to reach the employment numbers predicted
before the recession, he said.
Regardless, Kannapolis has
eight universities, a community college and numerous private companies in its
downtown.
Drive through any North
Carolina town with a shuttered textile mill and ask if
they’d like to trade, Dayvault
said.
“We are so much farther
ahead than we would have
been without the research
campus,” he said. “Most cities would absolutely fall all
over themselves to have this.”
Contact reporter Emily
Ford at 704-797-4264.
to comment on the department’s changing leadership
or officers’ allegations.
Mallet said only, “We’re
changing direction.”
After he was fired from
the Davidson County Sheriff’s Office in June 2009,
Westmoreland was hired
on October 14, 2010 at East
Spencer.
On July 18, 2011, he was
named interim chief, following the firing of former
chief Floyd Baldo.
We s t m o r e l a n d w a s
tapped as the new chief on
February 1, 2012.
But in last week’s Post,
officers’ accused Westmoreland of calling off help
from the State Bureau of
Investigation and the Rowan County Sheriff’s Office
during a 2011 homicide investigation.
A Sheriff’s Office incident report obtained by the
Post detailed an exchange
w ith Westmorela nd i n
SALISBURY POST
which the then-acting chief
told the other departments,
“he did not want our assistance,” the report said.
Relatives of the victim,
20-year-old Travis Hinds —
who was shot multiple times
at a house party that, at one
point, housed more than 75
people — told the Post authorities told them the SBI
and Sheriff’s office were
“booked up” and could not
assist in the investigation.
No one was charged in the
shooting.
Officers also alleged that
Westmoreland did not fully
investigate a 2-year-old’s
shooting on East Torbush
Street after police were
called to a home invasion
with a child injured. The
toddler was taken to the
hospital, according to investigative reports obtained
by the Post, and authorities
found what appeared to be
marijuana and digital scales
inside the home.
Months later, the report
said, the case remained
open and no charges were
filed.
All East Spencer alderman were present at Monday’s meeting, and there
were raised voices at times
in what appeared to be a
heated discussion.
Shortly after coming
back into open session, Mallett asked for motions on the
floor.
“I make a motion that
we’re to relieve the chief of
his duties,” Alderman Tammy Corpening said.
Mayor Pro Tem Curtis
Cowan seconded the motion.
After voting to relieve
Westmoreland of his duties
Monday night, Officer Baxter Michael was named the
acting chief with another
unanimous vote.
When asked about the allegations and firing of Westmoreland, Town Administrator Macon C. Sammons
Jr. said, “The only comment
I would make is that we’ve
decided to make a change in
direction and that that will
be effective tomorrow.”
Contact reporter Nathan
Hardin at 704-797-4246.