Thread regarding Michelin layoffs

ARDMORE — City workers hung evergreen wreaths along Main Street on a chilly Monday morning. Another crew set up sparkling light displays in the downtown park. They were preparing for the annual tree lighting and parade, two traditions that mark the start of the holidays in this southern Oklahoma city.

But a flurry of uncertainty swirls over this year’s festivities. The city’s largest employer announced weeks earlier that it would close.

It is not only that the Michelin tire plant offers steady work and good pay to hundreds of residents, the company also routinely helps fund community events and charities.

Many people in the city of 25,000 have a connection to the plant or a story to tell about it. And its economic reach stretches far beyond Ardmore. Some people drive from as far as an hour away to work at the plant.

Now local leaders and residents are bracing for the impact of its stunning shutdown.

“It just rolls downhill,” said Bill McWilliams, of Ardmore, who was selling fried pies at the city’s holiday fair. “It affects everybody. People don’t buy as many groceries or as many cars.”

Until last year, McWilliams spent five years driving a forklift at a warehouse that stored tires made at the plant. It seemed as busy as ever, he said.

Kevin Boatright, the city manager, said several people have asked him if the city received advance notice that its largest employer planned to shut down. “And my answer is the truth. Which is: That discussion was never had,” he said. “We weren’t notified at all.”

In a statement, Michelin North America said the plant could no longer meet the changing demands of the auto industry in a way that penciled out. Company officials said tire production at the plant would gradually slow down and stop completely by 2025. It plans to keep on about 100 workers who work in the rubber mixing part of the plant “for the foreseeable future.” About 1,400 others will lose their jobs; half of Carter County’s manufacturing jobs gone.

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The impact of the closure will be felt throughout south-central Oklahoma, said Loyd Stutsman, of Wilson. He works at a sandwich shop in Ardmore where he said he serves tire plant workers every day.

“You can’t lay off that many people and expect everybody to smile and say, ‘Hey, it’s going to be OK,’ because it isn’t.”

Boatright and others are trying to plan for what comes next. They hope to use Ardmore’s location — halfway between Oklahoma City and Dallas — to lure other big employers. Michelin’s sprawling property next to Interstate 35 could be another selling point. And at a time when businesses are struggling to hire skilled workers, Ardmore suddenly has a trained workforce that could fill out a factory.

Boatright said representatives of one company called him soon after Michelin announced it would close to inquire about the space.

Yet he acknowledges how hard it will be to replace the high-paying, blue-collar jobs that the city could count on at the tire plant for 53 years. Many of the region’s other big employers are distribution hubs for stores like Dollar Tree and Dollar General, jobs that pay less.
Loyd Stutsman talks from his booth at a holiday fair in Ardmore on Nov. 28. Stutsman said he believes the shutdown of the Michelin plant will be felt across the region.

“I think finding someone that is on the same pay scale as Michelin, I’m not saying that it’s impossible, but I think it’s going to be very difficult,” Boatwright said.

When the Uniroyal tire plant opened in 1970, the whole town celebrated. City officials said at the time that Ardmore had competed against 60 other towns for the $75 million factory and won out because of its good highway and rail access. They called the town a “city on the go.”

Production clicked along through the '70s and '80s. Then in 1989, Michelin bought out Uniroyal. The plant rebranded, though the name change has yet to catch on among many longtime residents.

Generations of locals grew up knowing that if they were willing to work, they could get hired on at the plant, said Lois Proctor, who manages The Bookseller on the western edge of downtown. Michelin workers sometimes stopped by the book store after their shift to pick up a gift or ask about new releases. The plant ordered box after box of “Oklahoma Unforgettable,” a coffee table book of scenes across the state. Every retiring employee received a copy inscribed with messages from coworkers, Proctor said.

She was thinking it was about time for Michelin to order another box of the books when she heard the plant was closing.

“I don’t think it’s going to turn us into a ghost town, but it is going to have an effect on the economy,” she said. “It will hit on the economy in all degrees, I’m sure.”

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While news of the shutdown shocked the town, factory jobs have been vanishing for decades from places like Ardmore. The state has lost 10,000 manufacturing jobs since 2014 and 50,000 since 1999, according to federal data.

In Carter County, manufacturing jobs pay $1,474 every week, on average. The county norm is $951. Jobs in the warehousing and transportation industry — a sector of the economy that is growing — pay only slightly more than the county average, at $998.

The news landed as Ardmore undergoes a retail renaissance. A string of big box stores and chain hotels have opened over the past decade, attracting interstate traffic and families from neighboring counties. Construction just started on a new Albertson’s grocery store. A golden shovel from the groundbreaking ceremony was propped next to Boatwright’s office in City Hall.

He said he believed Ardmore’s proximity to major highways and larger cities has fueled the renewed interest from retailers and others moving into town. The city also has rehabbed its historic downtown, filling up Main Street storefronts with boutiques, lawyer’s offices, a coffee shop and a few restaurants.

Todd Yeager, who owns Marvin’s Place Art Gallery on Main Street, said he hopes the recent revitalization can help Ardmore withstand some of the economic shocks that may be coming from the plant’s shutdown. He said he believes the region is better equipped to help laid-off workers find new jobs.

“Twenty-five years ago, it would have really knocked Ardmore for a loop,” Yeager said.

Boatwright and other city officials are still trying to measure all of the closure’s potential ripple effects. Boatwright pointed to the city’s annual budget. The city will either need to cut spending or find new funding sources to fill the holes that Michelin will leave, he said.

“They purchase over 100 million gallons of water from the city every year, which is a lot of revenue for our community,” Boatwright said. “And we’re going to lose that.”

Soon after the closure was announced, he and other community leaders formed a Michelin task force. The group is looking at how to bring in new businesses. Members also are compiling ways to help people who are losing their jobs, from new career training to help starting a small business.

“We all understand we’re not going to move ahead unless we’re all working together,” said Andrea Anderson, vice president of economic development for the Ardmore Development Authority.

One of the region’s biggest hopes for development is the Ardmore Industrial Airpark north of town, which public leaders and private partners have been working for years to transform into a giant distribution hub, where goods can be shipped in by plane or rail and then trucked out. The project needs more funding to make all of the plans a reality.

Anderson said the air park and other industrial projects make her hopeful about Ardmore’s future and ability to recover from the Michelin plant’s closure.

“The sky is not falling,” she said. “There are cracks in the ceiling, but the sky is not falling.”

She and Boatwright believe the Michelin plant site could someday be home to another company, or two or three, since it stretches across more than 100 acres.

Short of an employer dropping out of the sky to claim all of that land, the region will have to gain back the jobs bit by bit, said Proctor, the book store manager.

“We’ve all got our hopes and fingers crossed,” she said. “It’s going to be 30 jobs here, 10 jobs there.”