TMCnet News
Six years after Philips, Ottawa coming back(Lima News, The (Ohio) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Jan. 6--OTTAWA -- Dan Irwin can tell you the exact date Philips left town. It was Dec. 19, 2002, a day that seemed like a nightmare for some, but turned into a dream come true for others. It's been five years since that day when LG.Philips Displays closed its Ottawa plant and moved its television tube production to a new facility in Gomez-Palacio, Mexico. There were about 1,200 employees still working there at the time, more than 2,000 in the plant's prime, and many questioned if the community and workers would ever bounce back. The short answer is yes. "I think they've recovered pretty well. It might not be all the way back, but it's not bad," said Irwin, who spent more than 26 years as a laborer at the plant. "They're very resilient people. They'll do what they have to do. The floods, Philips closing, the way Ottawa and the county came back from all that, it's really proven that people do what they have to do to make a living or whatever." The last days of Philips There was a time not that long ago that a child growing up in Ottawa was close to guaranteed a good job. The company first moved to town in 1946, turning a former lawn mower factory into a plant that produced tubes for the nation's growing television market. By the mid-'90s the plant was pumping out 17,000 tubes a day and employed more than 1,800 workers. By 1996, 10 percent of the population of Ottawa worked for Philips, and many more survived either working for vendors of the company or the businesses that sold milk, furniture, clothes and the rest to the company's well-paid union workers. "Philips owned this plant longer than any other company. They kept in Ottawa and they were good to us," said Tim Macke, a former manufacturing manager for the company. "People just got used to it being there." It was late 1999, maybe early 2000, depending upon to whom you talk, that rumors of closing first started circulating. By the end of 2000, the plans were pretty much set. What followed for the workers and community was two years of waiting while jobs gradually moved south. Some of the employees began looking for other work or training right away. Others stuck it out, hoping the company might change its mind. "I believe those who took the initiative and went out right away and didn't wait for the bitter end, they ended up doing well for themselves," Macke said. "The rest, well they had it harder." Many of those workers went back to school. Because Philips' move came with the aid of the North American Free Trade Agreement, the federal government provided funding for retraining workers. More than 400 workers took advantage of the funds in the first couple of years, including Irwin who, within two months of leaving Philips, had his real estate license. "My mother was involved in real estate ... and had actually been telling me for a couple of years before Philips closed down I might want to get a license in case something happened or just something to do part time," Irwin said. "It was always a case of either I didn't have the time or take the time. All of a sudden I found out Philips was closing and I had the time." Not everybody moved as quickly as Irwin. The month the plant closed, Putnam County's unemployment rate was 3.9 percent. A month later, it jumped to 6.1 percent and kept climbing. "If you take a look at the unemployment numbers, and those are based on claims, they peaked out at about 8.2 percent a year or so after the close. They've slowly decreased and now we're actually below the state average. Actually, just recently we had a lower number than Hancock County, that's a first in a long time," said Jeff Loehrke, Ottawa's community development director. Moving on Employees weren't the only ones hurt by Philips' move. Those rising unemployment rates translated into dipping tax for the city and county. In 2002, Ottawa pulled in $1.64 million in income tax. Within two years, that number would dip by 32 percent to just more than $1.1 million. For a while, local leaders held out hope that a new company would move to town and bring the kind of jobs Philips took away. They've stopped hoping for that. "I think we held hopes that we would be able to replace all those jobs when the plant closed. But as time went on it became pretty evident the likelihood of that happening just wasn't in the cards for us," Loehrke said. "We had to start looking at other ways to add those jobs." New businesses have moved into the former Philips plant, but none comes close to the 2,000 jobs of its heyday. Dallasbased DBI purchased the 62. 3- acre plant in 2005 for $132,000 and sold it off in three different sections. About 290,000 square feet of the 1.2 million-squarefoot plant, went to Ohio Logistics, who uses it for warehousing and employs about 15 people. Verhoff Machine and Welding Inc. has added another 10 to 15 jobs, using about 300,000 square feet to manufacture kits for Lima's Joint Systems Manufacturing Center. The remaining 700,000 square feet remain unused. "That other portion, which would have been the core plant, sold to a group out of California. They're in the process of cleaning up the facility and making it a little more marketable for future use," Loehrke said. "I think it's important that we do have activity there. It's not deteriorating, it's not an eyesore. We're very thankful for that." While the closing's affect on income tax and employment was obvious, other changes are tougher to gauge. There are plenty of "for sale" signs in front of homes across the county. However, Loehrke said he hasn't seen a serious migration from the village. "It does not appear that we had a large population loss because of the closing of Philips. Many of those people are still residents in the area," Loehrke said. Irwin agreed. His years working at Philips left him with a lot of friends who are now customers for his real estate business. While he may help them find new houses around the county, he's not seeing them move on. "I don't think a lot of people have left Ottawa. There are some that may have downsized because they got older or just decided to move into something smaller, but they might have done that anyway. I've seen some people moving around, but I haven't seen them leaving town," Irwin said. Ron Honigford did leave town, sort of. After 21 years as a facility manager at Philips, he used the closing as an excuse to follow his dream of opening a coffee shop. What he wound up with was Touches from the Heart, a store in Glandorf that sells a variety of decorating items, foods and collectibles. One portion of the store is a coffee shop where he visits most mornings with his former co-workers, most of whom seem happy with life after Philips. "A lot of the guys come in in the mornings and we'll visit," Honigford said. "I talk to a bunch of people and I have to say the overwhelming majority are doing as well or better. It's only a handful that ended up on the other side of it." For Honigford, the change means more work and a pretty serious cut in pay. It also means he's happier. "I absolutely love it. After spending that many years in manufacturing, I had to make a decision. My heart just wasn't in it. This I enjoy," Honigford said. "I used to joke that I'm willing to work twice as hard for a third the pay. Well, we've got the twice as hard part but I'm not up to the third of the pay, yet." Like Honigford, Tim Macke was forced to make some changes in recent years. He now works three jobs to make up for the one he lost. But they're all jobs he enjoys. "It's far different but I really enjoy the flexibility. I'm fortunate because my wife has benefits through her job and fortunately, I was in a situation where I didn't have to go out and find the same kind of job or relocate," Macke said. Macke works at the Putnam County Community Thrift Store most days. He also works part-time doing taxes for a local accounting firm and in the summer he mows grass. It's a life he's come to enjoy, and one made possible by some good advice he received in his youth. "I had a boss once who told me, 'Save for your re-firement because you're in management and you never know when the next guy is going to come in and you're gone.' I always did save for that re-firement." That joy in a life away from manufacturing has helped erase some of the bitterness many workers felt when the plant left town. Macke, Honigford and Irwin all said they were grateful for the years they had with Philips "I enjoyed working there but believe me, the stress level that I'm at is much better than it was." Macke said. "The neat thing about it is that people that had the gumption and wherewithal to get it done are out doing new things. They would have never made that decision without a push and we got a big push." As happy as he is with his new life, Macke admits he can still harbor a little pettiness when it comes to his former employer. In 2006, just four years after leaving Ottawa, Philips closed its multimillion-dollar Mexican plant largely because, in an age of plasma and LCD TVs, the tube business is a bit of a dinosaur. Macke refrains from saying "I told you so," but just barely. "We were confused, especially those of us in management. We knew that the cathode ray tube was dying out and if they weren't going to be around much longer why build a new plant so that plasma or LCD would replace it? They would have been better off staying here for a few more years," Macke said. Macke's final small act of vengeance came at Christmastime when he bought his wife a new, flat-screen TV. Not only did he buy an LCD model, he refused to buy a Philips. "It's a Sony," he laughed. "When we were at Philips they always said Sony was their biggest competitor. I bought a Sony so there." You can comment on this story at www.limaohio.com. To see more of The Lima News or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.limanews.com. Copyright (c) 2008, The Lima News, Ohio Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. |