Cities Face Life Without 16 Ford Plants

The main gate of the closed Ford Lorain Assembly plant is shown Thursday, Nov. 16, 2006, in Lorain, Ohio. It's been nearly a year since this Lake Erie port city of 68,000 began wrestling with its reality of a future without Ford. It's a future other American cities face now that the company plans to close 16 plants by 2012, some in places already hit hard by the loss of steel and other factory jobs. (AP Photo/Mark Duncan) (Mark Duncan - AP)

LORAIN, Ohio -- He glances through the chain-link fence at hulking, dark buildings and weeds growing tall in pavement cracks. The chilling scene on a gray November day makes John "Larry" Wargo sigh with sadness. He remembers when the parking lots were packed _ with workers' cars and freshly assembled vehicles waiting to be sent from the Lorain Ford Assembly Plant to market.

"We were working double shifts and making 58 cars an hour, Thunderbirds and Cougars," says Wargo, 70, a retired Ford Motor Co. worker who put in 40 years, mostly as a maintenance electrician. "I feel sorry for the younger generation, because they won't see what really happened there."

It's been nearly a year since this Lake Erie port city of 68,000 began wrestling with its reality of a future without Ford. It's a future other American cities face now that the company plans to close 16 plants by 2012, some in places already hit hard by the loss of steel and other factory jobs.

Ford has idled or plans to idle nine plants so far. It can't close any of them until September because of its agreement with the United Auto Workers union.

Lorain, which worked out an agreement with Ford to close its plant early, is trying to find a buyer for the site as it fights to make ends meet. The income tax has gone up and city jobs have been cut. Potholes take longer to fill and grass isn't cut as often.

In Edison Township, N.J., a suburb of New Brunswick, where a Ford truck assembly plant closed in 2004, Hartz Mountain Industries is converting the site into stores, a small hotel, a community center and theater, said Gloria Dittman, president of the chamber of commerce.

But many cities say they can't begin such planning until the closings are official.

"If we as a city get involved, that could create an awkward situation. We can't really do anything with somebody else's property," said T.R. Carr, mayor of Hazelwood, Mo., where Ford in March idled a plant that employed 1,445.

The approaching closings come as automakers, hurting from expensive health care, cheaper foreign competition and other problems, look to cut costs.

Almost half of Ford's hourly production workers _ 38,000 so far this year _ have accepted buyouts or early retirement offers from the nation's second-biggest automaker, which lost $7 billion in the first nine months of the year.

About a year ago, GM made public a plan to idle 12 plants over three years. GM spokesman Dan Flores said so far production has stopped at assembly plants in Oklahoma City and Lansing, Mich., and at a sheet metal stamping plant in Lansing.

For all these cities, "it's all a question of getting property back into a tax base," said Kelly Novak, a research manager for the Washington-based National Association of Development Organizations.