AN EDITORIAL BY
LAWRENCE SOBCZAK
PUBLISHER
There is no bigger issue in Romeo right now than the pending closure of the Ford Romeo Engine Plant.
Period.
In a contract agreement with the United Autoworkers in 2019, Ford announced that it is closing the plant by the end of 2022.
Ford and the UAW have agreed to shift production and employees to other plants in Metro Detroit.
The 2.2 million square foot plant is built on 268 acres and currently employs 690 people. Some industry figures from the past have placed employment figures at as high as 1,900 workers.
Ford lists the current engines produced at the plant as: the 5.2-liter SVT; 6.2-liter — 2-valve gas and CNG; 5.0-liter blocks and rods; and the 2.3-liter head, block and crankshaft.
The plant is the single largest taxpayer in the village as well as the single largest user of sewer and water services. The revenue generated by the plant lessens the property tax burden for the residents of the village as well as the water and sewer bills for all of its users.
If you think the residential areas of Romeo are quite nice for such an old former agricultural village, it’s thanks to the tax and other revenues produced by the Romeo Ford Engine Plant.
According to recent statistics released by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Romeo’s industrial park, where the plant is located, makes Romeo the largest employment center with the highest paid workers out of all of the communities north of 26 Mile Road in Macomb County. (Washington Township is a close second in employment statistics but the average wages for businesses located in the township are lower.)
The importance of the Ford Romeo Engine Plant can never, ever be understated.
So why aren’t leaders in Romeo such as Village President Christine Malzahn or Village Clerk Katherine Trapp spending every waking moment of their days working on possible solutions to this pending calamity?
When members of the Romeo Board of Trustees or the public ask questions about it, the typical answer is that “the county is working it.”
It’s the giant white elephant Malzahn and Trapp do not want to talk about.
If you’re unfamiliar with the metaphor, a white elephant is something that its owner cannot dispose of, and whose cost, particularly that of maintenance, is out of proportion to its usefulness. The term originates from Southeast Asian monarchs in Burma, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia who raised the giant beast which later became a burden as their empires changed or became obsolete.
Like it or not, a combustion engine plant is a white elephant as every automaker in the world, including Ford, move towards electric vehicles.
Ford reports that it is investing $50 billion (yes, that’s with a “B”) towards the development and production of electric vehicles.
Why isn’t Romeo in line for some of those investment dollars? It’s an answer no one in the village apparently knows.
One could argue that Romeo’s luck with having a large industrial plant within its boundaries has finally run out.
I would argue that Ford locating the plant in Romeo was not luck at all. It took decades of hard work by local leaders to get Ford to locate there and another several decades of hard work to convince Ford to keep the plant there.
The genesis of Romeo’s industrial park began as past leaders realized as early as the World War II era that the village’s infrastructure was wearing out and needed replacing. The water and sewer facilities were woefully antiquated.
They looked around and saw magnificent 19th century homes that needed updating and that this could only be accomplished if the rest of the village was prosperous.
Likewise, the village’s industrial base was scattered among the central business district and along East St. Clair Street. Those buildings were small, old and obsolete.
The neighboring agricultural lands were also rapidly changing too — becoming suburbanized with many of the farmers working a second job in the auto industry in order to keep the farms intact.
A plan to annex land northeast of the village’s original boundaries to Powell Road in order build an industrial park was born in the 1960s. An updated sewage treatment plant was included in the plan as well as a connection to the future 96-inch watermain the Detroit Water and Sewage Department was going building through the area.
The new industrial park would have the types of buildings, jobs and tax base in order to support the village for the rest of the 20th century.
Also in the 1960s, Ford began looking around for a place to locate a tractor assembly plant in Michigan’s Thumb Region in order to tap the employment market. (Like now, labor was tight back in those days.)
Romeo and Capac were the finalists for the new plant location. Romeo won thanks to heavy lobbying by the village leaders.
The new plant opened in 1973 and was expanded over several years to its current size.
By the 1980s, Ford was looking to sell its tractor division. Fiat ended up buying it but did not want the Romeo Tractor Plant because it planned to move production to some of its existing plants around the world.
The village leaders in the 1980s put the shoe leather to the pavement and started knocking on doors again.
It was discovered that the tractor plant built a six-cylinder engine for the tractors and that the plant could be retooled to build a similar engine for automobiles. The plant’s future was safe for a couple of decades.
Fast-forward to 2022 — the internal combustion engine is going the way of the horse and buggy, as far as Ford is concerned.
So, what do we do now?
We don’t know because current village leaders do not have a direct dialog open with Ford, or at least they’re not sharing it with us.
I see three options:
Convince Ford to retool the plant to fulfill a need in their growing electric vehicle production;
Convince Ford to sell the plant to a reputable automaker or parts supplier that will truly utilize the full potential of the plant. Be wary of slumlords that strip equity out of old industrial properties much like the long line of former owners of the Packard Plant in Detroit;
Or make a plan to demolish the plant and redevelop it. Demolishing a plant can be costly because of the presence of hazardous materials, plus, parts of the building, such as the foundation, were not built to be easily demolished.
How do we accomplish this task?
Consult with other communities throughout the United States that have suffered a major plant closure. Unfortunately, this is a common occurrence with a mix of successful and failed transitions. Learn from them.
There are consulting firms that have helped businesses and communities plan out a transition. Hire one of them.
Some may argue that the state and federal government have programs and grants that lessen the blow from a major plant closure and that is true. These grants can make up the lost revenue over a period of years but it is only a parachute to bring a community to a softer landing after the closure.
The clock is ticking.
Malzahn and Trapp have wasted three years since the plant closure announcement attending ribbon cuttings for repainted crosswalks, having picnic lunches in dressed-up alleys and hanging self-congratulatory signs instead of tackling this problem head-on.
Luckily, we are just weeks away from the election and voters may want to find someone who doesn’t ignore the giant white elephant in the yard. Both Malzahn and Trapp are up for reelection this November and both have opponents running against them.
