Ready for take-off: Hazelwood Weathered Ford Plant Loss, Economic Crises and is Ready to Soar

Linda Whitley remembers driving down Lindbergh, past the Hazelwood Ford Motor Company assembly plant the day after demolition was completed on her former workplace in 2008.

“You go and see an empty field where you and your coworkers and friends worked. It was kind of a home. I would cry. It was like a physical blow,” said Whitley, formerly a toolmaker at the Ford plant.

“I guess I never really thought they’d close that plant,” Whitley said. “It had one of the highest productivity rates in the country. It just didn’t make sense.”

Ford closed its Hazelwood plant five years ago in March 2006, following through on an announcement company officials made in 2002. They laid off about 2,000 workers in that timeframe, just before the economic downturn hit in 2007.

The Ford plant closing after 60 years in the area was an economic blow for the and the entire St. Louis region, one made worse by the following economic downturn.

 In 2000, the U.S. Census listed Hazelwood’s median family income at $52,656. In 2009, the median income was $53,703 according to a three-year Census Bureau Survey estimate.

The survey took an average income for the years 2007 to 2009 and adjusts for inflation in 2009 dollars. A five-year survey also took an average income from 2005 to 2009.

Adjusted for inflation, an income of $52,656 in 2000 would have the same buying power as $65,602 in 2009, according to the U.S. Inflation Calculator.

A large part of that was the recession that hit in 2007. But Hazelwood Economic Development Director David Cox said the Ford plant closing was part of the economic slowdown and a huge blow to the St. Louis area’s economy.

“Those were some very good paying jobs and there were a lot of jobs,” Cox said. “When people lost those jobs, suddenly they don’t have money to spend on the things they normally would buy. That cut into our sales tax quite a bit.”

It also knocked some workers for a loop. 

Many Ford workers took a payout and retired while others accepted transfers to Ford plants in Kansas City, Chicago and Detroit. Those who stayed behind took a $100,000 payout and looked for other opportunities or retrained for other jobs.

“For me, I loved being a toolmaker,” Whitley said. “It was fascinating to take a block of steel or copper ad to make something useful out of it.”

But she came to the craft late – in her 50s. After the Ford plant closed, other toolmaking jobs went to people who were younger or more experienced than she was

Whitley retired after being laid off in late '05, but she was unable to make ends meet on her pension. She was one of the workers caught in that perfect storm – job losses, followed by a burst housing bubble.

Whitley turned to selling Mary Kay cosmetics – a job she also loves.

“I got so depressed when I lost that job, the only thing that got me through it was the Mary Kay weekly sales meetings,” she said. “It was like an AA meeting. They’d say, ‘If you’re not doing good, come to the meeting because you need the encouragement. If you’re doing good, come to the meeting because other people need to hear about it.'”

Starting over

also dropped by about 2 percent in those 10 years, going from 26,206 to 25,703.

“We didn’t see a huge population loss. We had some, but the whole county dropped in population,” he said. “We don’t have the large number of vacant homes other communities have.

The 2000 Census lists 4.3 percent of all housing units as unoccupied. The number rose a slightly in the 2010 Census, to 6.8 percent. But considering the real estate market over the past several years, “things really could have been a lot worse,” Cox said.

He acknowledged that if the housing market hadn’t been so bad, more people might have moved. One of those people would have been Whitley, who has had her home on the market for some time.

She couldn’t replace the income she had with Ford and depleted her savings trying to keep up with bills and a mortgage.

“The potential is there,” she said. “There are a lot of women in Mary Kay who are directors, making $200,000 a year and driving company cars. I might have done better early on with Mary Kay if I hadn’t been so depressed over losing my Ford job.”

Whitley said she loves the Mary Kay philosophy – and the encouragement she receives from other Mary Kay workers. She believes she’ll eventually do even better and make more than she did at Ford.

“It’s a matter of time – building your team and a customer base,” she said.

But she won’t be in North County when she does. Whitley will move back to her hometown of Potosi.

She is in the midst of a short sale on her home. She had a difficult time selling her home between the housing downturn and a foreclosed, bank-owned home deteriorating next door, she said.

She bought her home in unincorporated North County several years ago for $169,000 – and in some difficulties for which she blames Bank of America, Whitley wound up owing $170,000. She is selling her home for $135,000.

“I paid on my mortgage for 34 years. It’s tough to walk away with nothing to show for it,” she said.

Ready for take-off

But there’s light at the end of the tunnel, and it’s not an oncoming Ford Explorer. Cox said for Hazelwood, it starts with the large expanse of empty space where Ford used to make the SUV.

After sitting on the 160-acre site through the economic downturn, Panattoni Development Co. has begun construction on a 12,000-square-foot building for retail. There are no tenants for the building other than Panattoni’s sales office, but Cox said it’s a good sign that developers believe the economy is turning around.

Although Panattoni plans to use frontage along Lindbergh Blvd. for retail space, the old location couldn’t be better for a distribution or manufacturing site, Cox said. It’s a stone’s throw from the airport, near two major interstate highways, and is one of two industrial parks in the area with railway links, he said.

There’s also the developing China Hub situation, which could make Lambert St. Louis International Airport a prime destination for trade with the Asian nation.

Cox said the Aviator Business Park site also carries several financial incentives.

• There’s a chapter 353 tax abatement ready for businesses, providing breaks on real estate taxes.
• The area is a Missouri Enhanced Enterprise Zone, which would abate company income taxes.
• Aviator is part of the Foreign Trade Zone in which foreign trade items are not subject to customs duty.

“When the economy takes off, they’ll be ready,” Cox said

Whitley is ready to start over too.

She loves Mary Kay company, which was designed to help women be financially independent and earn as much as they want “without a glass ceiling.”

 “I started over when I was 50-years-old and became the first woman apprentice toolmaker and the first woman journeyman toolmaker (at the Hazelwood Ford plant),” she said. “I’ll start over again at 61.”

She takes encouragement from other Mary Kay employees who have made it, she said.

“You have the atomic energy inside your body to flatten the city and rebuild it,” Whitley said.

Hazelwood wasn’t leveled by the Ford plant closing and the recession, but there are some spots where rebuilding needs to occur. It might start with the old Ford plant site.