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* My dad, an uncle and several of their friends used to work at this factory before it fled south…
Once a site for about 3,000 blue-collar manufacturing jobs, the long-ago closed Kankakee Roper building will finally only be a memory.
A Chicago company, Brandenburg Industrial Services, has gained a demolition permit from the city of Kankakee to tear down the massive 810,000-square-foot complex that once anchored west Kankakee. […]
The building is in the city’s 3rd Ward and rests on 35 acres.
GE purchased the Roper business in 1987 and the Kankakee property was included in the purchase. A GE official said Wednesday that no decisions have been made about the property’s future.
The hulking structure has been a white elephant and a horrible eyesore for decades. The city tried to do different things with it, but nothing ever worked.
We know the governor’s plan for small towns like this: “Right to work.” But I wish the Democrats or the unions or the Republicans would propose something real of their own to counter that simplistic crud. But I don’t think they have a clue about what to do, other than throw tax money at corporations to move here.
I mean, for crying out loud, GE isn’t even using a local contractor to tear the place down?
Sigh.
posted by Rich Miller
Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 9:44 am
Sorry, comments are closed at this time.
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Maybe fund our higher education as it is one of our best features? Use that as a differentiator between us and other states when a company is looking to locate somewhere.
Increase funding to vocational ed programs (perhaps via the community college system?)
Comment by illini97 Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 9:47 am
drove by that place hundreds of time just another symptom of industrial decay that no one can find a solution for
Comment by erik Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 9:49 am
Sorry, Rich.
Real people. Real pain. Then there’s politics.
Comment by Independent retired lawyer, journalist Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 9:53 am
How do you plan for corporate greed?
Comment by Trolling Troll Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 9:57 am
The UAW leveraged their contract talks to get Ford to fund a $1 billion expansion of its south side plants.
Comment by wordslinger Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 9:58 am
>But I don’t think they have a clue about what to do, other than throw tax money at corporations to move here.
I think they know that the first thing to do is have a stable, balanced budget for the state. They also know that, however that is accomplished, every spending reduction and every revenue increase will be very unpopular with someone.
Comment by Earnest Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 10:05 am
Obviously workers comp, legal environment and our pension mess has a lot to do with our manufacturing problems.
Unfortunately the Democrats don’t seem to care about middle class manufacturing jobs.
Comment by Lucky Pierre Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 10:07 am
The Dems clearly have a plan, one that’s been publicly outlined repeatedly by Speaker Madigan — defend the status quo at all costs and raise taxes.
Comment by jim Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 10:07 am
The state has to decide if their target is large corporations or small businesses. It seems like large corporations have been the target with a “throw tax money” at them approach. But more jobs are usually generated by many small businesses than a few large ones, so perhaps the approach should be to get a group of small business owners and ask them which cost drivers most affect their decisions to locate in a particular state and area in that state. Then Illinois can address those factors that have the biggest impact on location decisions.
Comment by muon Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 10:12 am
== …other than throw tax money at corporations to move here. ==
It Is IL. This IS the IL plan, bunky.
Comment by sal-says Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 10:18 am
The problem is that there are no easy solutions to bring back large scale manufacturing jobs without harming the growth of the overall economy. No matter what programs we implement, a company can always find less regulation and lower employee costs in other countries. We can make it more expensive to import goods which can help increase domestic manufacturing, but the cost is increased prices for those goods for everyone. You are essentially creating a sales tax on manufacturing goods which is given to manufacturing companies and their employees.
That’s not to say that manufacturing in the US is dying. It is actually quite healthy. What is dying, though, is the type of manufacturing that requires thousands of people in one location.
Comment by Pelonski Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 10:18 am
As someone who works (engineering department) of what is now an almost empty structure-(last manufacturing moved to Juarez Mx last Thursday) Nothing unions, or the state would have done could have prevented this. It all comes down to how good of a report the corporation can generate to dazzle/BS the Wall Street fund managers and improve/maintain the value of their stock. And that is to dazzle/BS the managers THIS quarter. No thought is given to any future planning. We were the victims this time, but another area of the corporation will be on the chopping block next.
That being said–there is no plan–by anybody, except the Rauner types whose only plans revolve around increasing profits for themselves. That’s why so many people support Trump or Sanders, because they feel like they’ve been sold down river by the ‘traditional’ politicians who take corporate contributions and then sit on their hands while jobs are lost.
Comment by train111 Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 10:19 am
Isn’t the IL GOP plan; Cut, Cut, Cut?
Comment by Hedley Lamarr Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 10:22 am
Come on! Illinois is the best state to live in the entire universe! We are the best at everything! Those trying to change things with “simplistic crud” should be ashamed of themselves! Specially if they are called “Republicans” or “Rauner.” We don’t have to change a thing! Everything here is fabulous!
Hulking abandoned factories exist throughout the state. Good paying jobs that were created within these hulking abandoned factories are still here! What’s everyone complaining about? New jobs were created a mile away from where I live with a new “Dunkin’ Donuts!”
Viva Illinois! Our specialty is “denial”.
Comment by Louis G. Atsaves Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 10:22 am
This is a national issue that will require a national solution. Free trade agreements should only be maintained with similar economies, otherwise tarrifs need to be instituted. Tarrifs will bring back lots of jobs. Our economy is still the most stable and valuable in the world despite Every effort made by Wall Street to shift investment to China.
Comment by Small hands Oompa Loompa Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 10:26 am
Louis:
You’re on fire in playing the victim lately.
You can continue posting this nonsense but nobody has said everything is fine. Being against the Governor does not make one for the status quo.
Enough already.
Comment by Demoralized Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 10:27 am
Louis,
Solutions not sarcasm or parroting of campaign rhetoric please.
Comment by Nearly Normal Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 10:32 am
You want the status quo on labor law and worker’s comp. You want the status quo for the AFSCME contracts and state employee benefits. You want the status quo on pensions. You want the status quo of raising taxes. But accuse anyone here of favoring the status quo and you all freak out. Probably because deep down, you all know it is indefensible.
Comment by Robert the 1st Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 10:33 am
This entire situation can best be summed up by this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4zyjLyBp64
Nobody is answering.
Comment by Demoralized Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 10:35 am
Robert the 1st:
Again, opposing the Govenor’s specific plans does not mean a person is for the status quo. You and some others live in a black and white world. It’s the “you’re either for us or against us” world and that is just nonsense.
Comment by Demoralized Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 10:37 am
Anyone else remember this?
https://www.youtube.com/attribution_link?a=z5ed16yDVJc&u=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DRkgx1C_S6ls%26feature%3Dshare
Comment by weltschmerz Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 10:37 am
Manufacturing a not healthy and this has little or nothing with anything Illinois or any state does.It has to do with bad federal trade policies. For instance we have heard about the inflation boogyman from the free traders.Wrong. Tariff is a one time inflation hit. once but ongoing jobs or revenue it’s just another tax that can be offset elsewhere or be used as a stimstimulus. Ongoing inflation is the health care mess 3 trillion. Are we getting 3 trillion worth? That is what is hurting our budget. If we went to Medicare for all the state has 5 or 6 billion. But the federal government is as unserious as the states so expect nothing but further decline. In the last year manufacturing jobs are flat and last month we had a record deficit with China.
Comment by illinois manufacturer Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 10:38 am
If anyone is interested in actual data on manufacturing in the 50 states, the National Association of Manufacturers has a nifty website.
http://www.nam.org/Data-and-Reports/State-Manufacturing-Data/
Comment by wordslinger Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 10:38 am
You remember this weltschmerz:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKpX-5jQjQ0
Also a good descriptor of our Governor and General Assembly
Comment by Demoralized Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 10:39 am
==You want the status quo on labor law and worker’s comp.==
I don’t know enough about workers’ comp to have an informed opinion, but with what little I know I would agree that some changes need to be made.
==You want the status quo for the AFSCME contracts and state employee benefits.==
I favor a wage freeze and some other changes to the way hiring is done (i.e. seniority rules)
I would favor a modest change in health insurance, but oppose doubling premiums.
==You want the status quo on pensions.==
The Constitution demands it for current employees. I think they need to pass something for future employees. If they want a 401K for the state then pass it. Nothing is stopping them from doing it for future employees.
==You want the status quo of raising taxes==
I favor raising taxes and cuts if only for the reason that math demands it.
Comment by Demoralized Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 10:44 am
==Maybe fund our higher education as it is one of our best features?==
This 1000x this. Illinois, with a large high cost of living city like Chicago will never be a low cost production location. Decimating labor will not change that. The only thing left is having expertise and resources that don’t exist somewhere else. A focus on STEM education would do more to improve the state’s long term competitiveness and improve rather than lower wages.
Comment by AC Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 10:45 am
An 810,000 square foot manufacturing structure that has been empty for 30 years isn’t good for anything. A plan for it was needed 30 years ago. It would be easier to restore and renovate Anasazi dwellings at Mesa Verde, than this.
Comment by VanillaMan Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 10:49 am
Kankakee needs something to give them an advantage over other areas in America. The state may have to help Kankakee draw those jobs. Possibly
Invest in infrastructure
Lower tax rates, whether they are local, state or federal, tend to be viewed as advantages by corporations
Some type of unique economic or tax corridor
The first few places that adopt right to work would obviously make them stand out, though it could do more harm than good
Illinois has tried corporate welfare and knows that it does not work well, so that idea is little help.
Comment by Formerly Known As... Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 10:55 am
The charts make it pretty clear it’s a a national problem. Illinois can only do things at the margin…and it should but it is insane to burn the state down over it. Health care and Wall Street are something like 20%. In the fifities GM was the largest employer now Wal-Mart.
Comment by illinois manufacturer Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 10:58 am
==nobody has said everything is fine==
Respectfully, a number of people have been insisting that in comments for years. Look at some of the comments in the discussions about the number of people moving out of Illinois, polls showing Illinoisans believe they live in the ==worst== state in America or tax rates.
There are many comments insisting that the state of the state is fine and telling specific commenters that if they do not like it they should move elsewhere.
Comment by Formerly Known As... Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 11:00 am
FKA, you’re making a weak strawman argument. Move along and don’t do it again.
Comment by Rich Miller Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 11:02 am
There can be no one size fits all plan for economic development. Municipalities have to decide what their assets are and develop them. Minnesota gives state money to the munis to leverage this and it seems to be working better than the IL / WI “race to the bottom”.
Comment by James Knell Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 11:03 am
The truth is that if you are not part of a larger urban area, or near one, your economy is not coming back. The governor points to places like Texas, and Iowa. If you look at those states the growth is in their urban areas and university communities. The rural and isolated counties in those states have negative or near negative growth. The debate over the work camp in Hardin County is telling, there are fewer than 5000 people there and the work camp, with 70 employees, is the largest employer in the county. These places are done, and there is no magic bullet to bring them back.
Comment by 100 miles west Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 11:08 am
I think it was factual and relevant if you look at comments in posts like ==Sad story of a sad state==. Regardless, it was not intended as a straw man. Sorry y’all, and I will move on.
Comment by Formerly Known As... Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 11:22 am
This is all a result of bad international trade/antitrust/tax policies in Washington.
Divide and conquer - Multinationals have managed to divide the country up into warring states all competing against each other for crumbs while they move operations, jobs, and profits overseas in exchange for tax breaks and immunity from prosecution.
The problem’s in Washington - can’t be solved at the state level.
Comment by TinyDancer(FKA Sue) Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 11:52 am
Anybody driven across the new I-70 bridge going into St. Louis? Why is that Armour meat packing plant still even standing. It obviously hasn’t been used in decades. What an eyesore to welcome people to Illinois. Illinois is broken and hardly anyone who has the means to help fix it either doesn’t know how or doesn’t care to. This applies to both sides of the political side show that is that is masquerading as the Illinois state government. I hope I’m not too harsh.
Comment by Forgottonian Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 12:04 pm
When those eyesores are ripped up, the concrete too often gets deposited as rip rap on eroding banks of Illinois rivers and streams. Eyesore to eyesore.
The growth of those lost factories and industries will never be duplicated. It was a passing phase of US and world history.
If at some time mankind wakes up and puts the value in natural ecosystems and environmental services that they rightly deserve, there could be hundreds of millions of jobs and small businesses created in ecological restoration, clean energy and in building the infrastructure of a truly sustainable civilization. All that is lacking is the vision, the imagination to think outside the box that got us to this sorry and unsustainable state. We ain’t gonna grow our way out of it, at least not in the 20th Century mold.
Comment by Vole Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 12:04 pm
When I was growing up I lived in a subdivision a stone’s throw from this plant. Half the dads in my neighborhood worked there. Roper’s corporate headquarters was nearby, and it operated another huge manufacturing plant in Bradley. Roper was an anchor for the whole town of Kankakee, and then, in the early 1980s, poof. Gone. Moved south in search of cheaper labor and electricity, lower taxes, whatever it is that corporations search for today when they open new plants in Vietnam or China or Mexico.
The saddest part is that Kankakee never addressed the reality of the situation. It held out hope that another company would come in and take over the plant and return to the good old days. They held onto this false hope for thirty years and now, then end is finally here.
The fact is, while it was located on a good rail line, it was too far from the highway to be of much use to a new manufacturer. No one wanted to invest the millions needed to modernize the roads to make it more attractive. New developments tied to new infrastructure further limited the viability of old, obsolete sites like Roper.
Years ago, there was a giant old brick ice house located next door to Roper. It burnt to the ground in one of those amazing fires that you remember forever. No one was hurt, thank God, and Roper was largely vacant at the time. The real tragedy of the ice house fire was that it didn’t spread to Roper and take that place out too. Then maybe Kankakee could have moved on sooner, instead of clinging to false hope for thirty years.
The old economy is gone and the time for mourning it is over.
Comment by 47th Ward Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 12:19 pm
There’s a fair amount of disagreement in this thread but I will suggest almost everyone is correct. There are so many things to do…
Comment by Harry Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 12:20 pm
@47th Ward: Many of the guys I went to high school with got jobs at Roper when they graduated, or went to A.O. Smith, Swift, Armour, Borden or to any of the number of companies around Kankakee. Until we get a budget that doesn’t dedicate a quarter of its revenue to paying down pension debt, nobody’s going to want to bring middle class jobs back to this state.
Comment by Steve Reick Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 12:36 pm
Following up on the small business angle.
According to NAM, of the $100 billion in manufactured goods produced in Illinois in 2014, $61.6 billion was for export, a 63% increase since 2009.
Ninety percent of exporters were small businesses.
Of course, the likes of CAT and Deere are still big dogs. But small manufacturers are definitely in the mix.
http://www.nam.org/Data-and-Reports/State-Manufacturing-Data/State-Manufacturing-Data/December-2015/Manufacturing-Facts–Illinois.pdf
Comment by Anonymous Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 12:37 pm
===Until we get a budget that doesn’t dedicate a quarter of its revenue to paying down pension debt===
Careful what you wish for.
The “debt” you speak of is 100 percent constitutionally protected. So, the only way to decrease the ratio of debt to spending is through increased revenues - one way or another.
Comment by Rich Miller Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 12:46 pm
Steve,
This has been a global trend in manufacturing for forty-plus years. The lack of a state budget this year has absolutely nothing to do with it.
Comment by 47th Ward Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 12:46 pm
Manufacturers do not pay taxes on income derived from goods sold out of state.
They’re not on the hook for pensions.
Check out the annual reports for CAT, Deere, ADM, etc., and look at their state and local tax liabilities across all 50 states. It’s oogats.
But nice try, Steve.
Comment by wordslinger Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 12:55 pm
@47th: I’m aware of that, I was just waxing nostalgic to my younger days. I forgot another plant down the road from Roper: Gould Battery where my dad worked for 20 years.
@Rich Miller: We’ve got to find a way to carve this underfunding off the budget, set it up like a capital project, and find a separate revenue stream. We can’t let the budget continue to be held hostage to that elephant on its back.
Comment by Steve Reick Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 1:19 pm
@Wordslinger: I’m well aware that Deere and Cat aren’t on the hook for the state’s pensions. My comment re pensions was directed to the issue of getting our state’s fiscal house in order, which must happen before businesses start to relocate here.
Comment by Steve Reick Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 1:26 pm
You can’t truly be surprised about not having a local demo firm in Kankakee capable of demolishing an 810,000 sq ft facility…. If we had to do that, Brandenburg would have been one of the quotes we sought for something of that scale. As a State, we’ve squeezed out the smaller contractors. Many have either folded, or been bought up by larger firms such as Helm Group or William Charles.
Frankly, Kankakee should be thrilled GE is bothering to take it down. Many property owners walk away after the company folds and many others find it easier to pay property taxes on a derelict property than deal with seven figure demo and environmental remediation costs.
Comment by Shemp Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 2:35 pm
I hate hearing these things. Unfortunately it’s not an isolated event. Happens too often.
“GE isn’t even using a local contractor to tear the place down”
Check the captions for the 2nd and 3rd pictures. Wonder who the contractor is if they can tear it down for $1.38?
“Demolition of the old Kankakee Roper plant along the city’s west entrance on Illinois Route 17 will cost $1.38 and should be complete by August.”
Comment by Finally Out (and now very glad to be) Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 2:58 pm
All you can do is create a friendly, healthy economic environment.
If you build that, they will come.
Comment by Yobogoya Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 3:02 pm
Kankakee is lucky GE is taking down the old plant. They have tried for years to get it done. I don’t think anyone had clung to the idea that these jobs are coming back (at least for the last 8 years they haven’t). There are a lot of local efforts centered around re-training people here for the jobs of the future (and some that are here already).
Unfortunately, some of the developments that would boost the entire Chicago southland region (say from Chicago Heights south to Kankakee) have been shelved, including the Illiana and the Peotone airport. Like it or not, without a major investment like that, the southland area will continue to struggle.
Comment by k3 Friday, Mar 4, 16 @ 3:39 pm