A pall hangs over Eastern Ohio. In March 2019, GM will stop producing the slow-selling Cruze sedan. That means 1,600 decent-paying jobs will be lost, probably forever.
OH senators Sherrod Brown and Rob Portman will visit with GM head Mary Barra this week. But, no realist expects much from that. It is unlikely, with the down cycle coming to the auto industry, GM will invest in retooling that plant for the more popular SVU or pickup.
Once severance and unemployment run out, Lordstown and the areas surrounding it could become Crimeville. Already the region is economically devastated by the demise of the steel industry. Unlike Pittsburgh, there wasn't diversification. The industry that is thriving is meth. There are frequent fires from cooking gone wrong.
However, that can be prevented by a bit of imagination. Like an old mining town in southwestern Arizona, Lordstown can be reconfigured into a tourist mecca.
That town is Tombstone. It freezes in time what used to be. That ranges from stagecoaches riding through town to cowboys hanging around the watering hole.
Lordstown can become a city-wide kind of museum about the origins of the auto industry in the Midwest. In itself that can economically revive the region. The analogy is Cedar Point in Sandusky, a city otherwise down on its luck.
The alternative is lots more meth factories, along with an increase in opioid use, theft, and suicides.
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