A recession survivor, Lordstown has a reversal of fortune

As Janesville Assembly Plant was winding down at the end of a grim 2008, another General Motors town 500 miles to the east in Ohio was feeling upbeat.

In Lordstown, GM built small, fuel-efficient cars, the kinds of vehicles consumers were clamoring for after $4 gasoline decimated demand for Janesville's hulking SUVs. Two months after GM put Janesville on its doomed plant list, it announced a $350 million upgrade for Lordstown to replace the Chevrolet Cobalt with the Chevrolet Cruze, giving the Ohio workers a level of job security that was rare during such a troubled time for the U.S. auto industry.

"We have mixed emotions because so many other plants are closing," Jim Graham, then the president of UAW Local 1112 in Lordstown, said in August 2008, when GM redoubled its commitment to Lordstown. "But we're thriving, thank God."

A year later, President Barack Obama visited to highlight GM's fledgling post-bankruptcy revival. He declared Lordstown, which opened alongside the Ohio Turnpike in 1966, "one of GM's flagship plants" and wrote "The car of the future!" above his signature on the hood of a Cruze prototype. When Cruze production started the next year, Lordstown began running around the clock, and sales of the car took off.

To help staff the third shift, GM recalled workers it had laid off in Pontiac, Mich.; Spring Hill, Tenn.; Mansfield, Ohio; and, yes, Janesville.

About 120 former GM workers in Janesville who had not already transferred or gotten other jobs were given an ultimatum: Go to Lordstown or lose their benefits, including supplemental unemployment pay.

For those who made that 500-mile move to Ohio's Mahoning Valley, a familiar story began to play out in the years to come as sedan sales began to crater.

Sensing what might be ahead, the UAW teamed with local businesses and a bipartisan group of Ohio politicians in mid-November to launch "Drive It Home," a grassroots campaign encouraging GM to invest in Lordstown. Later, they learned GM's board of directors had, the very next day, approved the restructuring plan that killed the Cruze and removed future product allocation from the plant.

Barring a deal with the UAW during contract talks next year, the Lordstown area stands to suffer the most severe economic consequences among the latest group of communities GM could abandon. As with Janesville, many jobs in surrounding Trumbull County are at least indirectly tied to the plant, whose relative isolation means it's the largest — in some cases the only — customer of many nearby suppliers.

"The recovery process is painful, and there is no easy, quick or singular solution," said James Otterstein, economic development manager for the Rock County Development Alliance in Wisconsin. "Plus, the recovery will not resolve underlying socioeconomic issues that already exist. Therefore, not everyone will experience the recovery's lift in the same manner."

Otterstein said communities experiencing the kind of job losses that Janesville did need to be "strategic, yet realistic" in executing a plan to fill the void. "Rather than attempting to reinvent the wheel," he said, "find out what's worked in other locations and then rightsize it for your community."

Lordstown officials will undoubtedly look to Janesville for guidance as they prepare for life after GM. That 500-mile separation that made the plants feel like they were in two different worlds a decade ago turned out to be not far at all.