WARREN Delphi Packard's presence in city continues to wane

By DON SHILLING
VINDICATOR BUSINESS EDITOR
WARREN -- City factories that supplied the wiring that helped power the nation's car craze have gone almost completely dark.
Delphi Packard Electric Systems has moved almost all production from Warren, where it began 113 years ago and once employed 6,000 people.
Packard has shifted workers to newer area plants over the years, but the last major work at its Dana Street complex -- a plastic molding operation -- was sent this year to a new $60 million plant in Vienna.
The only production left on Dana Street is ignition cable, but those 50 workers are scheduled to be transferred to the North River Road plant in Howland and Bazetta townships by 2005. Packard also has 15 workers making silicon compound on Griswold Street, just north of Dana Street.
As jobs leave, Warren is losing tax revenue and the prestige of being a manufacturing center. It's gaining something it doesn't want -- more vacant industrial buildings.
Michael Keys, the city's community development director, said he would have preferred if executives were a bit sentimental about Packard's hometown.
Started with light bulbs
The company started humbly along Dana Street in 1890 when brothers James and William Packard began making light bulbs. The brothers later made Packard cars on Dana Street, but in 1901 they hit on an idea that would change Warren forever, or so it seemed.
They began making cable and wiring, and the growth of Packard Electric exploded right along with the nation's automobile industry as it became a supplier of automotive wiring harnesses. Through the 1950s, the Dana Street complex was expanded 12 times to include 625,000 square feet of manufacturing and office space.
Keys said he understands, however, that there is no room for sentimentality in today's boardrooms.
"Corporations are going to make a bottom-line decision," he said.
Aging industrial buildings have a hard time competing with industrial parks in rural and suburban areas.
Packard has been in search of newer and more efficient plants since the 1950s, when it built the first phase of the North River Road plant.
Recently, it built the Vienna plant and spent $42 million to remodel its Cortland plant, so it could move its plastic molding operation to facilities that are climate-controlled and better designed for modern material handling techniques.
Moving some work out
Packard also has changed the focus of its local operations. Labor-intensive work, such as final assembly of wiring harnesses, has been sent to Mexico, while local workers run sophisticated machines that produce cable and plastic and metal parts.
Packard, which is part of Michigan-based Delphi Corp., now employs about 4,000 hourly workers in the Mahoning Valley, compared with 13,500 in 1973. Salaried workers have been cut from 2,100 to 1,400 in the past 10 years.
Dana Street still is home to Packard's executive offices. These offices, which employ about 150 people, were moved back to Warren last year from Liberty, where they had been since 1992.
Mayor Hank Angelo said he thinks those offices will be moved to North River Road, but Doug Hoy, a company spokesman, said no such decision has been made.
Hoy said Packard hasn't decided what to do with the vacant plants on Dana Street.
Keys and Angelo, who did not seek re-election last week, have discussed whether it would be good for a nonprofit arm of the city to accept the buildings if Packard offered them.
Finding tenants for old industrial buildings is difficult but not impossible, Keys said.
"It just takes a lot of time, money and incentives," he said.
Loss of revenue
Tom Gaffney, city income tax administrator, said he estimates Warren will lose $1.2 million in withholding taxes if all employees leave Dana Street.
He figures 1,900 people worked at the complex last year, although not necessarily all at the same time. He estimates about 800 of them are city residents so will continue paying income tax, but tax money will be lost on the rest.
He said more aggressive tax collections have offset the loss of income tax from Packard workers. The city's $19 million income tax collection will be up about 5 percent this year, he said.
City officials have been pursuing delinquent taxpayers and nonfilers since the start of 2002 and have added 4,000 active accounts, pushing the total number of active accounts to 24,000, he said.
While Packard has moved workers from Warren and cut its work force in general, its willingness to invest $100 million in plants in Cortland and Vienna is still good news for the Mahoning Valley, Angelo said.
"It has secured jobs for the Valley, even if more are outside the city. The company has committed to staying in the area," he said.
shilling@vindy.com