Idle Talk, Idle Plants.

• Author: Giammarise, Kate
• Position: Ford Lorain assembly plant - Essay

Illustration by Jeremy Traum

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THERE ARE ALWAYS A LOT of emotions for Larry Wargo when he drives by the former Ford Lorain assembly plant. It's not far from his home in Lorain, Ohio, about thirty miles west of Cleveland on the shore of Lake Erie.

He sees it at least once a month, surrounded by a chain link fence, when he goes to his regular meeting for retirees of United Auto Workers Local 425, across the street from the plant. The factory closed in 2005, and the local union exists only for the retirees now. Wargo started working as an electrician at the assembly plant in 1958, the same year it opened. Over the decades, workers there made the Mercury Cougar, Ford Thunderbird, Ford Falcon, and Econoline van.

"When I drive by, it's disappointing to see what it has become," Wargo says. "Our politicians get so excited about putting a fish farm there, or a beverage depot," he adds, referring to two recent plans to grow jobs at the site. "They get so excited about fifty jobs and some storage space. It's sort of hard to take."

Ford sold the plant and land to a developer within a year after it had closed--relatively quickly by industrial reuse standards. The developer agreed, as a condition of the sale, to take on millions in environmental liabilities associated with the facility, and made improvements to the site to market it to potential tenants. Since it was sold in 2006, several companies have moved into the plant.

But the process has fallen short in one respect: jobs. Today the site employs about 134 full-time workers at four different small companies and another 50 to 70 seasonally, according to city income tax records. That's a far cry from the nearly 1,700 workers who earned their paychecks there when the facility shut down in late 2005. Employment at the plant was upward of 7,500 in the 1970s. When the California-based developer Industrial Realty Group purchased the site in 2006, local elected officials were hopeful as many as 1,700 light industrial jobs could be created within five years.

"Ford Motor Company damn near gave that plant away," laments Wargo. "I drive by that place sometimes, and I think it's a shame. I put in forty years there, and it looks so barren." The site covers nearly 300 acres, and the main assembly building is 3.6 million square feet.

Lorain community development official Don Romancak urges patience. "Communities don't heal overnight," he replies, when asked about the slow pace of job growth at the site.

Though it still struggles to attract jobs, compared to some other auto communities, Lorain is a success story. An Associated Press analysis published in January reported that of 128 plants closed in North America by the Big Three automakers and their...