Chrysler’s Twinsburg stamping plant attracts interest from new users
by Stephen Koff / Washington Bureau Chief
Wednesday May 20, 2009, 12:48 PM
The main entrance to the Chrysler Stamping Plant in Twinsburg.Updated at 5:02 p.m.
WASHINGTON — With 1.2 million square feet of factory space and 165
acres altogether, an industrial site in Twinsburg could suit many
manufacturers. For decades, it suited Chrysler.
Now other industrial interests have started asking, preliminarily,
whether the site of Chrysler’s Twinsburg Stamping Plant might be right
for them.
But marketing the Twinsburg plant and brokering a deal is
complicated, because Chrysler is in bankruptcy. The company wants to
permanently close the 1,250-worker auto factory when it reorganizes and
merges with Italian auto maker Fiat, but in the meantime, it has left
the city of Twinsburg with a ton of uncertainty about the property’s
future and equipment, its employees, and the community’s tax base.
“While it is difficult to accurately assess the
seriousness of those requesting information, it is apparent that there
are those who have more than a curious interest in the Stamping Plant
property and its assets,” said Larry Finch, Twinsburg’s director of
community planning and development. “We have entertained four queries
for information.”
Two were from “individuals with industrial experience” who were
interested in continuing operations as a stamping plant, with enhanced
capabilities to handle plastics forming and tool-and-die making, Finch
said. He declined to identify them but said neither would be likely to
occupy more than 100,000 square feet.
“Their intent would be to operate as a job shop for Chrysler/Fiat,
other auto manufacturers, and other machinery and equipment
manufacturers,” he said in an e-mail. “They would expand into other
areas as they developed markets and capabilities.”
Others have inquired about using part of the Twinsburg plant to
produce electric cars and wind turbine components. These were inquiries
that came through the Ohio Department of Development, which searches
for suitable facilities across the state for industrial users whose
identities at this stage are kept private.
Preliminary though these ideas are, they are a lot more enticing to
Twinsburg than the prospect of leaving the plant closed. But it is
unclear where and how the city should direct the inquiries. To
Chrysler? To its future parent, Fiat, even though the Chapter 11
bankruptcy filing shows that the new owner has no intentions of taking
over the Twinsburg plant after March 2010?
Then there’s the question of whether Chrysler or Fiat will strip
the plant of its presses and robotics. Twinsburg believes it should
have a claim on these — they could help a future occupant — since the
city has provided $18 million in tax incentives to Chrysler in recent
years. But it is unclear how or to whom this claim should be made.
“Our difficulty,” said Finch, “is we are on the outside looking in
at the bankruptcy proceedings. Even though we have an $18 million
commitment” and an obvious stake in the outcome.
These are just some of the questions city officials have for
Chrysler, Fiat, and President Barack Obama’s administration, which is
sending an emissary on Friday to meet with plant workers and a task
force assembled by Mayor Katherine Procop and others.
“It is vitally important for both the schools, city and employees
to reutilize the property as soon as possible,” Procop said. “Having a
deteriorating facility of this magnitude would be a travesty for this
community, as well as the loss of job opportunity for the skilled
workforce at the stamping plant.”
Ed Montgomery, Obama’s liaison to communities affected by the
depressed auto industry, will visit Twinsburg on Friday morning. In a
telephone news conference Wednesday, Montgomery said he and other
federal agency representatives will discuss how help is available for
community development, energy and new-technology manufacturing,
workforce training, environmental issues affecting the re-use of old
plants, economic development, small business start-ups, education and
the loss of school district tax revenue, and health and human services.
Assistance is also available from the economic stimulus bill that
Congress passed to help the broader economy, Montgomery said.
“My focus is to help the community no matter what happens with the
Twinsburg facility,” Montgomery said when asked if his mission suggests
that Chrysler’s decision to close the plant is irreversible, despite
some sentiment in the state that it might not be. “I want to work with
the mayor, I want to work with the people there. The mayor formed a
task force soon after the news came out about Twinsburg. We’re going to
go and meet with that task force and find the ways to help them support
the strategies that they want to put in place.”
U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown said that he, Twinsburg Mayor Katherine
Procop, the United Autoworkers Union and others last week discussed
getting Montgomery to come, but it was only one step in a multi-layered
strategy.
He said Chrysler intends to reopen the plant temporarily when it
emerges from its Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and “we hope we can help keep
it open longer and longer and longer.”
“But second, we’re also following the path of what happens if the
plant closes in terms of getting federal help like Dr. Mongtomery can
provide,” Brown said. “And third, we’re going to begin to look for what
kind of company can go in there if in fact Twinsburg closes. Can we get
wind turbine manufacturing, can we do something else there? “So we’re
always pursing all three of those: keeping the plant open, helping the
workers adjust, and doing economic development in addition.”
