Moraine closure has lesson for Lordstown
Leaders: Fight to keep plant open or fill it if it shuts.
An Ohio blue-collar community finds itself with a General Motors assembly plant that doesn’t have a vehicle to assemble or a blueprint for the future.
It’s all-too-familiar history for Moraine and Dayton — and the alltoo-painful present for the community of Lordstown, where a GM plant faces probable closure.
The news is devastating for the Trumbull County plant in eastern Ohio that employs 1,600 workers. Production there is slated to end after March 1.
Montgomery County Commissioner Dan Foley said Dayton should have “empathy” for Lordstown.
“You can’t sugarcoat this,” Foley said. “Communities go through
the five stages of grief when things like this happen.” Dayton-area leaders who dealt with GM’s closure of its SUV assembly plant in Moraine and other parts plants throughout the city in the past 20 years said there are lessons to be learned from what took place here.
Leaders here say leaders in Lordstown should fight for a new vehicle while they can, then fight to hold on to plant infrastructure once that becomes impossible. Find the right developer, market the property aggressively — and hope for the best.
‘A different environment’
Dave Hicks, former city manager of Moraine, helped shepherd a local effort to keep GM’s Moraine plant standing — and then to find a new user there.
Today, a Chinese-owned automotive safety glass producer, Fuyao Glass America, employs more than twice as many people in Moraine than GM did when it shut down production two days before Christmas in 2008.
No one should panic, Hicks said. Or worry about who’s to “blame.”
“It just doesn’t matter,” he said. “At the end of the day, you have to move forward.”
But move forward how? The auto industry is changing, and so is the way peo- ple commute and move from point A to B. Ride-sharing and autonomous vehicles, as well as on-demand driving services, are heraldinga sea of change in the decades- old ways Americans relate to their cars, especially in big- ger metropolitan areas.
Mike Davis, Moraine development director, said the problems facing Moraine in 2008 and Lordstown in 2018 are not identical. The national economy today is stronger, and GM is not bankrupt.
In 2005, three years before GM closed its Moraine plant, GM posted a worldwide loss of $10.6 billion. Less than six months after GM closed the plant, the automaker filed for Chapter 11 protection.
Today, GM says it is prof- itable in all of its core oper- ating segments, with most recent quarterly revenue of $35.8 billion, up 6.4 percent from the third quarter of 2017. Its net income for the quar- ter was $2.5 billion. “It is a different environ- ment,” Davis said. Still, GM is readying to slash some 14,000 jobs at five North American plants in the U.S. and Canada. On the same day GM reported $35.8 billion in revenue, CEO Mary Barra emailed all 54,000 salaried GM employees in North America offering a volun- tary buyout to 17,700 salaried employees with 12 years or more with the company. Kristi Tanner, senior man- aging director at JobsOhio, the state’s private development corporation, notes that GM has not yet definitely declared that the Lordstown plant will be permanently closed. “No one knows what GM is planning to do except GM,” Tanner said. “There are cer- tainly ongoing jobs discus- sions.”
What Dayton did
First, leadership in Dayton at every level aimed at a common goal, said Tanner, who was an integral part of the statewide team that led Fuyao chief Cho Tak Wong to the Moraine facility in 2013. Dayton’s goals were clear, Tanner recalled: Save the building, bring in a new developer, then attract a new user. “Every step of the way, you had political and community leaders aligned and in lock- step,” she said. We “just got literally everyone around the table” and talked about ways to help soonto-be-laid-off GM employees, giving former workers a place “where they know they can go to get help,” Foley recalled. There’s a tendency for a company like GM to demolish former plant structures or sell them off as quickly as possi- ble, Tanner warned. But the community centered around a site as large as the Lordstown plant has a stake in what happens there, she said.
Lordstown leaders should work to find a developer with a strong track record “willing to do the right thing for com- munity,” Tanner said.
“That quite frankly doesn’t happen very often,” she added.
Arno Hill, mayor of Lord- stown, is adamant that he will fight for his city’s plant.
“We would like to have a new product,” Hill told the Dayton Daily News. “There are so many variables there. We know that GM is making money.”
For now, pursuing a new product should be a first step, Foley agreed.
“Until GM completely shuts the door on that idea, that’s the right thing to do,” he said.
Lordstown has a pair of plants side by side: an assem- bly plant and a metal fabrication plant, which makes parts for the assembly plant. Hill said he has not heard “any specifics” about GM’s plans for the fabricating plant, but he fears that the fate of both plants is inextricably linked.
“GM has said nothing,” Hill said. “Right now, we’re waiting just like everybody else.”
‘We sprang into action’
Stu Lichter is the California investor who bought the GM-Moraine from federal deal erties er’s Lordstown that structure, physical ated new Lichter’s of ries ing ting of demolish R-Dayton, called the merce A At U.S. Moraine the about U.S. bankruptcy plant: key process from user. with assets, the one former during departments him. Rep. bankruptcy Treasury duty trustee plant, purchase, it. former Preserve the “scrappers” Lichter said was who point property He could to Mike for GM the city’s getting city take with then created cares stint. anyone GM and plant automak- said. the attract Turner, before court officials to the permit- control associ- in called about inqui- prop- Com- insist infra- 2011 ask- by The and city to in a a that be benefit before call Turner action vent building.” plants “I “What able had any the hate close as purchase. said. to to never a happens buyer demolition show community to the is “We they think been an community of sprang when are economic the made,” if of incred- to plant these that that into preible structure replaced,” Auto mental sold erty If the assets the Communities to Response) RACER a GM-Moraine scrapper, Lichter which with (Revitalizing huge Trust can’t said. Environ- Fuyao prop- infra- had be
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nies like There The Lordstown, who Lordstown are may Chinese look Lichter at location facilities compa- said. will brownfield infrastructure simply remain land itself if the a is vacant plant torn down, location he isn’t predicted. good enough “The that hot commodity.” the land there is a huge
a bad “That brownfield site would site,” have Hicks been said of the Moraine plant’s land Pike and between Kettering Springboro Boulevard north of Stroop Road. “We never would have gotten someone to build a building on that.” Asked whether Lordstown officials will try to keep the local plant structures standing, Hill said, “We haven’t gotten that far yet. It’s only been two weeks.”
‘Past is no prelude’
John Heitmann is a University of Dayton history professor viewed as an authority on the domestic auto industry. If the Lordstown plant — or any former automotive plant — is to have a future, it will be created on personal relationships, Heitmann said.
“I think what the Lordstown people have to be thinking of is ... developing these relationships with the Chinese, with others, the personal relationships that will draw people in,” Heitmann said.
He credits former UD President Dan Curran with having long-standing relationships with the Chinese people that helped pave the way for Cho Tak Wong, founder of the global Fuyao company, to investigate possibilities in the Dayton area.
He said new users will be drawn to where theircustomers and markets are, where unions don’t hold sway and opportunities exist.
“The past is no prelude to the future,” Heitmann said.
Lichter said Lordstown will ultimately need “someone like me” and a tremendous amount of “outreach” to all partners.
One irony: Rick Wagoner, then the chairman of GM, cited rising fuel prices and a weake ned demand for gas-guzzling SUVs and large trucks when he announced in June 2008 the planned closure of the Moraine plant.
Today, full-size trucks and SUVs are ascendant, and the Lordstown plant is endangered by weak demand for sedans — such as the Lordstown-produced Chevrolet Cruze.