By Reid Forgrave
Enquirer staff writer

WILMINGTON - In this city of 12,000 people, the rural Clinton County seat, this weekend was a time to celebrate after international air carrier DHL announced it would consolidate its hub operations here.

This weekend was also a time for Clinton County residents to breathe a sigh of relief.

"This would have been a ghost town if DHL left," said Bessie Fisher of Wilmington, who has worked on the loading floor of the DHL facility for four years.

Instead of leaving Clinton County for the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, DHL will be adding about 900 jobs in the hub just outside the city limits of Wilmington, 50 miles northeast of Cincinnati.

"We were either going to be looking at huge economic potential or huge economic devastation," said Clinton County administrator and local goat farmer Mark Brooker. "It's not just for Clinton County. It's for the whole area. We would have lost 6,000 jobs if DHL left."

In this county of 45,000, DHL is the largest employer, providing jobs for more than 6,500 people in Clinton County and surrounding areas.

For area farmers, night jobs at DHL offer an opportunity to keep working their farms yet still receive health benefits offered by the Brussels-based shipping giant.

For workers like Fisher, DHL is the best employment prospect in the region. It's the largest employer in a five-county area.

Without infrastructure improvements, such as the proposed Wilmington bypass that will give trucks a direct route around town and to the highway, residents don't think the deal would have worked.

"Without that bypass, it would have just been a bottleneck," said Aaron Quigley, who has lived in Wilmington since 1971. "This is such a huge trucking hub here. It's close to so many cities - Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus, Cleveland, Chicago. We're sitting in a pretty good spot right here."

Quigley's daughter, Diana Quigley, said she figured DHL would stay in town when she saw a fleet of concrete trucks entering the complex a month ago. DHL wouldn't be investing in its infrastructure if it were moving, she said.

It's not the first time this airfield has teetered between boom and bust.

The DHL facility was originally built as an Air Force base, but it closed in the 1960s, costing the county 300 to 400 jobs.

But DHL later converted the Air Force base to its shipping facility.

For this community that's suffered several economic setbacks in recent years - the closing of MicroWarehouse a year ago and the pending closing of Irwin Industrial Tool Company - the impact can hardly be understated, county leaders say.

"For Clinton County, what this means is we're open for business," said county commissioner Rick Stanforth. "This will let us make our next big economic step as a county and open up the doors to a new era of economic growth here."

The announcement seems to already be showing dividends, county leaders say.

Just in the past week, county officials have been contacted by at least two distribution companies that want to relocate to be closer to the DHL hub.

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E-mail rforgrave@enquirer.com