Not much local news in the Tubes today. One story did stick out and it’s a point that I’ve been trying to make to my friends and family about the North Carolina Research Campus (NCRC): It’s bigger than David Murdock.
This from WRAL LocalTechWire:
Angiogen, a company development treatments for people with cancer, will relocate its headquarters to the North Carolina Research Campus…
The focus of the company’s research is angiogenesis – the formation of new blood vessels – and its role in cancer. According to the National Cancer Institute, angiogensis is a process controlled by certain chemicals. Angiogenesis inhibitors stop the process.
Having spent my formative years raised as a Southerner-in-Exile in the mother of all company towns - Detroit, MI - I’m rather familiar with the “rich guy keeping the little guy down”, “the rich just get richer”, “the workin’ man can’t get ahead”, etc rhetoric of folk songs and Democratic campaigns. I’ve lived just long enough away from that thinking to realize it’s a festering load of neo-Bolshevik crap.
Why I spend a bit of time talking about the NCRC is the rhetoric of the opposition has that well-worn, Populist tone. As if we’re a bunch of little pawns in David Murdock’s game, and he’ll make money off of the the poor, little working man as he does this for his own gain. Well, Angiogen up and moving their headquarters to Kannapolis from Illinois is an indication that proletarian fear doesn’t apply in this case. Biotech companies aren’t the Joads driving across the desert in hopes of living hand-to-mouth - they move where there’s talent and more funding.
The point is we don’t live in a company town anymore. In the span of 10 years, I predict that the majority of people working at the campus will not work for Dole or one of the universities; but for companies big and small. Even some that don’t even exist now. That brings a whole other range of challenges and opportunities. As we wrap our mind around this new reality, the way we approach growth management, economic development, and infrastructure improvements will completely change; and we need to get ready.
More later.
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