(This is good for North Carolina, but I have one question for Secretary Snow, how many of these laid-off textile factory workers is the Federal Government pay for the retraining of to become biotech research workers?)
Fri Feb 3, 2006 07:03 PM ET
By Mark Felsenthal
KANNAPOLIS, North Carolina (Reuters) - A biotechnology research campus due to rise on the grounds of a shuttered textile factory symbolizes the ability of the U.S. economy to weather global challenge, U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow said on Friday.
Snow toured the site of the planned North Carolina Research Campus, a biotechnology research center to be built in a town once known as the "city of looms." When towel and sheet maker Pillowtex shut its doors on July 30, 2003, about 4,800 workers lost their jobs in Kannapolis and surrounding towns. It was the largest mass layoff in North Carolina history.
Last year, Dole Foods and the University of North Carolina launched a joint venture to build a biotechnology research center to house nutrition and plant and science institutes, a math school for girls and a community college campus, among other facilities on the 264-acre site.
Project officials estimate that several thousand new jobs will be created at the new site, some as soon as 18 months from now. The facility is projected to take five to seven years to complete at an estimated cost of $1 billion, much of it funded by an investment by Dole Foods owner David Murdock. "This is an example of how the U.S. is going to compete," Snow said in front of the partially demolished century-old factory, flanked by state and local officials.
(more at link below)
<
http://go.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=11096579&src=rss/domesticNews>