Ironton Iron

(This entry is longer than usual. Please bear with me.).

The last time I was in Ironton, Ohio, I made it a point to drive past the former Ironton Iron plant. Or what’s left of it.

The old plant made iron castings that were used in the rail and heavy equipment industries. It was once owned by Dayton Malleable, then it came under ownership of a company known as Amcast. In 1984, Amcast said it would close the plant, and verily there was weeping and gnashing of teeth in Ironton.

Then a city of about 17,000 people, Ironton could not afford to lose about 600 union jobs. So government officials and private folks and others got money together and hired a consultant to see if the plant could be run as an employee stock ownership plan, or ESOP. Wouldn’t you know, the consultant said that was a great idea.

So the community got together and raised a lot of money through grants and loans. As part of that, the workers would have to buy at least $2,000 worth of stock in the new company, to be known as Ironton Iron. Some of them borrowed against their pensions to make that investment. Other people could buy stock at $200 a share, but because of a law that I didn’t understand and still don’t, stock could be sold to Ohio residents only.

Before the plant could open, the consultant said he would head the company but only if he were paid an exorbitant salary and received exorbitant benefits. That’s not how he described it, but that’s how the community interpreted it. So they bid him good-bye and found some local people to run the factory.

As the plant was about to open, I called someone familiar with the iron industry and asked if success were likely. He said it was not.

The plant operated for a while, but it couldn’t make money. So its shareholders agreed to allow the company to be acquired by another iron company known as Intermet. The employee-stockholders would get their $2,000 back once the Ironton plant turned a profit. But it never died.

Some workers thought Intermet worked the books so that the plant never could show a profit, but they had no real proof.

In early 2000, Intermet surrendered to the inevitable. The plant closed, and the employee-stockholders were out of luck. Their individual investments of $2,000 were gone.

Later that year, Intermet leveled the plant. The foundry that dominated most of a mile of South 3rd Street was gone.

As with most old plant sites, problems with environmental contamination prevented the site from being redeveloped for other uses. But now the state of Ohio could be about to turn loose $15 million to remove contamination from the site or contain it so it does not pollute anything else.

Once that’s done, the site can be redeveloped.

For the good of Ironton and the Tri-State, here’s hoping that is exactly what happens. It makes more sense to use old sites than it does to contaminate a fresh greenfield site.

Ironton needs that good news. It really does.