Farm town recovers after learning lessons of free trade the hard way
By GREG BARRETT | Gannett News Service
CELINA, Ohio — There were hard feelings, to be sure. And lessons.
When Huffy Corp.’s bicycle plant left Celina in 1998 and went the route of so many other American manufacturers — first to nonunion labor, then overseas — the good-natured officials in this farm town turned unusually blunt.
“I resent them,” then-Mayor Craig Klopfleisch told reporters after Huffy rebuffed the government’s $14 million incentive package to stay. “They have said they are done with us, so maybe it’s time to say we are done with them.”
Huffy’s departure nearly tripled Mercer County’s unemployment rate — from 3.5 percent to 9 percent. And it quickly turned country bureaucrats into experts on globalization.
The lessons of free trade, city and county officials say, can be applied to small towns across the country that are losing their manufacturing bases.
Lesson No. 1: “Don’t put so many eggs in one basket,” said the county’s economic development director, Larry Stelzer, an avid biker who peddles a Raleigh today, never a Huffy. At one point, Celina’s basket held two major employment sources — Huffy and machine manufacturer AGCO Corp. AGCO closed its Mercer County plant in 1995. Losing Huffy completed a one-two punch that staggered Celina.
“Oh my golly,” Stelzer exclaimed. “At first, people were having to commute 200 miles a day just to find work. Some would travel all the way to Michigan and commute home on the weekends.”
But Celina has overcome larger obstacles. The town was founded two centuries ago on a drained swamp. Today, it sits on the nation’s second-largest man-made lake, where $100,000 lakefront condos are being built.
“We got over it,” Stelzer said of the closures. “We got busy rebuilding.”
Lesson No. 2: Grow locally.
The majority of new jobs in Mercer County (the unemployment rate is 4.1 percent today) stem from the expansion of mom-and-pop businesses like tool-and-dye manufacturers and fabrication shops.
“These businesses are controlled by the people who live here, not some corporate heads living somewhere else,” Stelzer says. “These businesses are not going to leave. They have roots.”
Lesson No. 3: Turn idled workers into a magnet for new employers. As soon as Huffy left Celina, Mercer County began touting its laid-off workers and boosting their morale. The ex-workers were collectively named grand marshal of the annual Lake Festival Parade.
Celina never conducted an economic impact study of Huffy’s departure. A wood plaque behind Stelzer’s desk explains why: “Just Do It,” it reads.
“We’re not the types to get carried away crying in our beer, “ he said. “We turned the loss into an unbelievable marketing tool.”
In national and international manufacturing magazines, ads read: “Huffy closure unleashes work force of 1,000.”
The results were impressive.
No sooner had Huffy turned exclusively to imports then Mercer County landed or expanded three companies, Stelzer said.
Celina Aluminum Precision Technology, a subsidiary of Honda Foundry Co. of Japan, added 92 workers in a $13.4 million expansion.
Basic Grains, a manufacturer of rice cakes from Canada, opened a plant in the county with 80 employees before doubling the work force.
De Ruijter International, a rubber manufacturer from the Netherlands, hired about 10 workers.
“If you have a good work force, the companies will come,” Stelzer said.
Combined, the companies employ about one-fourth of the jobs Huffy once supplied. But other help comes from a sprawling Honda factory 110 miles away that employs 13,300 Ohioians. More than 200 Japanese companies making mostly auto and motorcycle supplies operate in Ohio.
“You have to diversify your economy,” Stelzer said. “One day we’re sitting here all nice and sassy and pretty and then all of a sudden — boom. No one is immune to these plant closings.”