With 2 plants closing, Northwest returns to an Arkansas state of mind
Between the Fortune 500 companies, a world-class art museum, an unemployment rate lower than the national average and one of the fastestgrowing research universities in the country, people in Northwest Arkansas sometimes seem to forget that they’re part of Arkansas, too.
To hear some up here tell it, there’s the state of Arkansas and then a separate, Utopian state consisting exclusively of Benton and Washington counties. Proximity to Oklahoma and Missouri, plus all the transplants from around the country, probably add to the disconnect.
An amusing reminder of our, um, Arkansas-ness came last week when Rogers park commissioners declared that beasts of burden are not welcome on the Razorback Regional Greenway. You are, however, welcome to bike or walk the $38 million trail system — funded mostly by Walton money — on the way to September’s squirrel cook-off on the Bentonville town square.
See?! We’re not that fancy after all.
A far less humorous reminder that Northwest Arkansas isn’t much different than its neighbors to the east and south of the Bobby Hopper Tunnel came recently when a pair of manufacturers announced relocations that will leave more than 700 without jobs.
Apex Tool Group is moving Springdale operations to an existing plant in South Carolina, leaving between 200 and 250 unemployed. Superior Industries International Inc. will shift aluminum wheel production to Fayetteville and Mexico, phasing out about 500 jobs in Rogers by the end of 2014.
Plant closures and layoffs are a reality the state has dealt with far too often during the country’s most recent recession. Northwest Arkansas — save a handful of jobs here and there or a few bankrupt/ imprisoned real estate developers — has generally seemed to avoid the large-scale bad news that has plagued others since the economy went south in 2008.
When a company sees the potential to cut costs or raise revenue by moving operations elsewhere, it doesn’t much matter if you’ve got a 72,000-seat college football stadium, a $10 million outdoor concert venue or a horseless, regional trail system. Now, the silver lining. Talk to economic develop-
ment officials at the state and local level and they’ll tell you no region in the state is better equipped to withstand this sort of loss. These closures didn’t provide the magnitude of “gut-shot” that accompanies plant shutdowns in towns that have grown dependent on a single industry, Arkansas Economic Development Commission Executive Director Grant Tennille told me.
“It hurts,” Tennille said. “But this isn’t like driving past a plant somewhere else in the state and knowing that five to 10 years from now it is still going to be empty. I don’t want to minimize the losses, but I’m not staying up at night worrying that this is some indication of Northwest Arkansas falling off the table.”
That optimism exists and is shared by others for a couple of reasons.
For the past two years, employers in the region have told the Northwest Arkansas Council and local chambers of commerce that a lack of available skilled workers has been the No. 1 inhibiting factor to growth. Granted, not all of the soon-to-be unemployed workers will have skills that translate elsewhere, but there is now an available pool of machinists and processing engineers that didn’t exist before.
Wal-Mart’s campaign to bring more manufacturing back to the United States is a sure bet to create jobs. Having available workers and existing buildings (assuming Superior and Apex are looking to sell or lease their facilities) could play in favor of attracting new businesses and those jobs being created here.
Whether the optimism is justified or not will become more apparent over time. Superior is hosting a job fair Sept. 24 at the plant. Rogers is hosting a regionwide job fair at the John Q. Hammons center Oct. 8. AEDC, the Department of Workforce Services and local chambers are doing what they can to identify the skills available and match them with interested employers.
Details on some of the specific steps being taken are likely something we’ll visit here down the road.
If those efforts are successful in helping these workers find new employment relatively quickly and there is no significant dent in the unemployment numbers this time next year, then surely the rest of the state can forgive Northwest Arkansas’ tendency to gloat this time. If you have a tip, call Chris Bahn at (479) 365-2972 or email him at