WisBusiness: Forward Janesville president says city in position to rebound

By Brian E. Clark

For WisBusiness.com

Within five years, Janesville should be able to recoup the 3,500-plus auto and auto-related jobs it has lost with the closure of the GM plant and numerous suppliers, John Beckord, president of Forward Janesville said Tuesday.

Speaking to a board meeting of the Wisconsin Technology Council, Beckord said the loss of GM was a major blow to the city. Nearly all of its 100-plus remaining workers will be laid off Thursday when they finish contract work on Isuzu trucks.

But Beckord said the city’s economy had diversified over the past decade and was in a much better position than Kenosha when the Chrysler plant shut down 20 years ago and laid off 5,000 workers.

Beckord said Janesville is poised to rebound and grow in coming years, thanks to its location, available manufacturing space, workforce and solid education infrastructure.

“The table is set,” he said. “But so much depends on the national and global economies. Moreover, we can’t control the business climate in the state. We just have to educate our legislators so they make Wisconsin a better place for companies to prosper.”

Beckord said Janesville remains home to a number of large companies, several with annual sales of more than $1 billion and numerous factories around the country.

“We have a diverse mix of companies remaining,” he said. “What we have to do is encourage them to expand and try to attract others to come here.”

Though GM will never be the company it was in the past, he said and many others in the community and in state government still hold onto the hope that the automaker will eventually return to Janesville, where it could build a variety of vehicles in the 4.8-million-square-foot plant.

But if that doesn’t happen, he said the city would like to attract developers to reuse the site, as well as open land to the south that could be used for a new industrial park.

“If GM survives, jettisons the ‘crap,’ the market comes back and it figures out the right product mix, they may need capacity again,” he said. “And that plant is certainly big.”

Beckord said he is a realist, however, and noted that despite all that civic and labor leaders have done to entice GM, the company may “eventually go down” and the GM jobs will never come back.

In the meantime, Blackhawk Technical College President Eric Larson said enrollment at his campus between Janesville and Beloit has surged in recent months because of the recession and Rock County layoffs at a variety of businesses.

“We thought GM would never close,” he said. “But after 100 years, it did. And in two days, the last work on Isuzu trucks will end.”

“I have to be careful how I say this,” he said. “But when the economy is bad, my business is booming.”

To meet the 22 percent increase in students, he said he has had to hire eight new faculty members, add 88 new sessions and expand the parking lot.

He said health sciences, energy and protective services (law enforcement) studies are big, and that some laid-off workers are considering starting their own companies.

Larson said he has met with Commerce Department head Dick Leinenkugel to tell them that the state needs to do more than simply hang on to existing jobs, but also work to create new jobs during this recession.

“If we don’t increase work opportunities in Wisconsin, I’m afraid we will see serious social dischord if there are no jobs for our graduates to go to,” he said.