Sunday, May 30, 1999
Making a home for new Jeep
Toledo spends millions for assembly operation
BY JOHN SEEWER
The Associated Press
TOLEDO — The neighborhood where Mary Ebright played tag and spin-the-bottle, where she got her first job and where she met her husband and raised her two daughters is nearly gone.
Already gone are her mother's house and the neighbors on either side. The only world she knows has been bulldozed to make room for a giant Jeep assembly plant that will make a new line of Cherokees.
“I try not looking out the kitchen window anymore because it gets you so depressed,” she said. “Everything in my life happened here.”
Within a few months, the Ebrights will use the $122,500 settlement they are getting from the city to move into a new home in an unfamiliar neighborhood. The city is spending $35 million to relocate the neighborhood's 83 families and 16 businesses.
It's part of an incentive package worth about $300 million — one of the nation's most lucrative packages ever given to a corporation. State and local tax breaks account for $185 million.
DaimlerChrysler AG, Jeep's parent company, is spending $600 million on the new plant and another $600 million on refurbishing its existing plant here — the oldest operating auto plant in the United States.
In exchange, the city is putting about $75 million into cleaning contaminated soil at the plant site, installing water and sewer lines, relocating railroad lines, and building a new road called Chrysler Drive.
There are other incentives including free land and reduced taxes. Originally it was said the city's investment would be $20 million.
The payoff, the city says, is the 4,900 jobs that will stay at Jeep and 26,000 spinoff jobs that will be created by parts suppliers and other companies dealing with the automaker.
Overall, the plant will have a $1 billion impact on the northwest Ohio area, said Mayor Carty Finkbeiner, who was instrumental in securing the Jeep deal.
“Fifteen years from now, people will look back at this and say what an outstanding bargain this was,” Mr. Finkbeiner said.
Known as “The Glass Capital of The World,” the city is home to three of the nation's largest glass makers — Owens-Illinois Inc., Owens Corning and Libbey-Owens-Ford Co.
Its proudest product, though, is the Jeep, which first rolled off the assembly line here in 1941. Nearly all of Jeep's Wranglers and Cherokees are built here.
“Had we lost Jeep, it would be like Detroit losing the Tigers. It would be like the Yankees leaving New York,” Mr. Finkbeiner said. “We don't have a major league sports team. Jeep is a major part of our identity.
“Had we lost Jeep, the psychological impact would have been very great.”
To cover the cost of keeping Jeep, the city borrowed $27 million from the federal government and sold off land it owns in the suburbs. But Mr. Finkbeiner said the costs will have a minimal impact on the city's budget.
Terry Lodge, a lawyer who represented three families forced out by the Jeep project, thinks the city went overboard with its financial commitment.
“It's absurd. The city could have done much better,” Mr. Lodge said.
He thinks a downturn in the economy and layoffs at Jeep could send the city spiraling toward bankruptcy.
“If there's trouble in the sport-utility industry, this town's in for a world of hurt,” Mr. Lodge said.
Construction at the plant along Interstate 75 is well under way and on schedule. The highly automated operation is expected to open in January 2001.
There are worries that a more efficient plant could lead to fewer jobs. United Auto Workers Local 12 President Bruce Baumhower thinks overall employment could end up as low as 4,500 workers — a cut of 400 jobs.
But now the only sense of urgency near the plant construction site is among the neighbors looking for a new home.
“There's just a lost, empty feeling around here,” said Mrs. Ebright.
Only a few homes remain. Most have been bulldozed. Piles of dirt and shallow pits in the ground that once were basements and cellars remain.
Vandals have shattered windows in the unoccupied homes that are still standing. The few residents who remain try to protect their property with signs saying “Still occupied!”
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