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Making over a mill town: Kannapolis set for next wave of development

KANNAPOLIS, N.C. — Kannapolis has spent $133 million buying up downtown blocks, building a minor-league baseball stadium and improving the city’s core infrastructure. The resulting recreation of a small-town Main Street has drawn almost $240 million in private investment.

Sounds like a story with a happy ending. But Kannapolis leaders say it’s just the first chapter.

“The first five years of this whole thing was public investment, one major private investment and filling all of the existing spaces,” City Manager Mike Legg said. “Now, we’re going to talk about the second phase, which is the economic boom we’ve really been looking for.”

That includes a range of new initiatives. The city is embarking on a strategic planning process called Imagine Kannapolis to chart its future growth. It is looking to stretch the wave of private investment beyond downtown. At the same time, the N.C. Research Campus — an anchor for everything that has happened to date — is headed in a new direction that will likely expand the opportunity for more private investment.

Read the full story here.

(WATCH BELOW: Kannapolis City Schools, four other districts first in NC to sue JUUL)