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South Rowan officials brainstorm future development

By Ben McNeely | Media General

Published: March 20, 2009

CHINA GROVE — The future of southern Rowan County will have to be a joint effort between Kannapolis, Landis, China Grove and Rowan County government.

Representatives from all four entities began that dialogue Thursday night — and it centered around six miles on Interstate 85, between Lane Street and N.C. 152.

"It is a blank slate," said Robert Van Geons, executive director of the Salisbury-Rowan Economic Development Corp. "Save for the interstate, no one has run infrastructure in this area."

But how the municipalities will work together to create a vision for the South Rowan corridor remains to be seen.

The meeting came out of a voluntary annexation request, made by the owners of the Southland property, which has 327 acres near Old Beatty Ford Road.

Last month, the landowner group, lead by Gary Morton, submitted a request to Kannapolis City Council to start the voluntary annexation process. He said the vision is to piece together other land to create an industrial enterprise region, "along the lines of the Research Triangle," that would brings jobs to southern Rowan County.

This enterprise zone, Morton said, will be set up for industrial development — hopefully biotechnology companies that may come to be close to the North Carolina Research Campus in Kannapolis.

The ownership group, GDRM, asked Kannapolis to submit to the General Assembly, through N.C. Rep. Fred Steen, a request to allow the annexation, to take effect Sept. 30, 2011. That would leave enough time to find a master developer and come up with a marketing plan.

It would also give Kannapolis, Landis and China Grove time to figure out an agreement on how to run utilities to the Southland site and through the county, and how to effectively develop the South Rowan corridor in a way that would create sustainable jobs.

Among the talk of existing water and sewer lines, municipal leaders said if there was a joint effort to be created, that the process had to be open.

"You have to think about the scale of this," said Rowan Planning Director Ed Muire. "You want a transparent process. You have to sell the process, not the product."

City Manager Mike Legg said the Southland property owners approached Kannapolis with the annexation proposal before, and Kannapolis backed away from it.

He said the two-year timeframe would give the cities time to work out a plan to effectively develop the site.

Landis Mayor Dennis Brown said his board of aldermen was very concerned with making sure part of the Southland property is brought into the Landis town limits.

Brown reported to the group that Landis has engineering studies and a timeline in place to run water to the Southland site.

Van Geons suggested that each entity come up with relevant questions and send a representative to form a study group to explore the questions — such as building infrastructure and environmental, social and economic impacts to the corridor. He set a timeframe for 30 days to bring those questions back.