In the best Midwestern tradition, Will County produces 20 million bushels of corn every year.
But agriculture is not the only form of growth in this largely undeveloped area southwest of Chicago, which found itself economically devastated by a deep recession earlier in this decade.
Thanks to a grass-roots effort at recovery, 3,000 jobs have been created by 44 firms attracted to the area in the last two years.
Those numbers have given fresh hope to an area that descended into deep gloom after 8,673 manufacturing jobs were lost through plant closures and moves to the Sun Belt.
The area suffered when its major employer, Caterpillar Inc., consolidated two parts-supply plants into one and shrunk its Joliet work force from 7,000 to as low as 800 before returning a total of 3,000 employees to its payroll.
”At the time, we had become so negative in our perceptions of our community that we could only go up,” said Thomas Feehan, a Joliet attorney who has been active in economic redevelopment. That upward movement now is starting to show results.
”Will County is the last frontier in metropolitan Chicago,” said Ruth Calvert Fitzgerald, the diminutive executive vice president of the Joliet/Will County Center for Economic Development, a privately funded agency that receives major credit for sparking the area`s recovery.
”The price and availability of land and the lower taxes all work in our favor,” she said.
”Of the five collar counties, Will County has the greatest number of obstacles to overcome,” said Paul M. Green, director of Governors State University`s Institute for Public Policy.
”Per capita, it is the least wealthy. It has had the least percentage increase in population growth. And heavy industry in Joliet took the biggest hit during the recession.
”Given all that, Will County is trying to counter unfavorable publicity, overcome its sometimes Byzantine politics and present a united front.
”Most important, it has recognized that its growth will not come trickling down from south Cook County, but from the rapidly growing areas of Du Page County and elsewhere.”
The Center for Economic Development was formed in 1986 from Greater Joliet Inc., a group of civic and business leaders organized about a decade ago to foster growth in Joliet, the county seat with 78,000 population.
The city`s unemployment level hit 26.5 percent in 1983. Since then, the jobless rate has been slashed in the city to around 10 percent. Countywide, it has fallen from a record 18.1 percent in 1983 to 5.9 percent.
Will County`s traditional reliance on heavy industry is gradually being supplanted by service jobs. And civic leaders believe it is on an economic development roll that will restore a quality of life that was sorely bruised. Meanwhile, a relentless campaign to lure even more foreign and domestic firms to the county is being pursued simultaneously with a drive to retain existing businesses.
An appeal for economic development funds launched in August, 1986, has been oversubscribed by private citizens and corporate neighbors.
Contributions ranging from $50 from retirees to as much as $200,000 from major employers have poured in. A total of $3.3 million has been collected, $800,000 over the goal.
Several months earlier, Fitzgerald had been recruited to serve as the group`s executive vice president to bring the volunteer effort professional guidance.
While serving in a similar post in her home town of Spartanburg, S.C., she had been credited with creating 12,000 jobs and bringing in more than $1 billion in investment.
The Will County core group was expanded to include representatives of hospitals, the clergy, academia, labor and the county`s 28 municipalties in the hope of achieving a regional approach to restoring economic stability.
As economic problems increased, public resolve to turn things around strengthened, said Joyce Schenk, communications manager for the Center for Economic Development.
Frank Turk Jr., president of Turk Furniture in Joliet and a member of the center`s executive committee, said one goal of the turnaround effort was to keep economic development ”out of the political arena.”
”That`s why we went to the private sector,” he said. ”People had to believe in us.”
In keeping with that position, the center has sought no state, local or federal grants or matching funds.
”We will never depend on governmental dollars for this program,”
Fitzgerald said. ”I never would have come here if that was the plan.”
Even before the fund drive was announced, more than $1 million had been quietly committed, said John Barrowman, a Caterpillar vice president who headed the solicitation of major employers.
”Our emphasis was on how much they could invest in Will County`s economic future, not how much they could donate,” Barrowman said. ”We told them that we had a good community to market and that they would benefit from increased wealth and population in the area.”
A prominent law firm, solicited for a $50,000 contribution, wrote a check for $51,000 ”because we always like to do more than we`re asked.” A local restaurant-White Fence Farm-gave $40,000.
By last January, the goal had been reached. And the money has continued rolling in.
”Right now, we probably are the largest privately funded economic development group in Illinois,” said Robert Thornton, partner in a Joliet accounting firm and also an executive committee member.
To attract enterprises, local governments, including school districts and municipalities, are offering such incentives as tax abatements and road access to business sites, Schenk said.
Among successes to date are plans for a $16 million Midwestern headquarters for Coilplus-Illinois Inc., a subsidiary of Mitsubishi Corp. that eventually will employ 100 in a metal processing plant; a Hartford Group service facility employing at least another 200 people; and a Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing Corp. training facility with 60 employees.
Keith J. Conroy, the development center`s location coordinator, has scouted existing sites for multiple use by smaller firms, including such enormous facilities as the 600,000 square feet in the shuttered Caterpillar plant and 800,000 square feet in a virtually vacated USX Corp. facility.
The center has begun an 18-month advertising drive in national newspapers, magazines and trade publications seeking to attract industrial electronics; service industries; bulk distribution and catalogue mail order businesses; specialty chemicals; and manufacturers of alternate energy recovery systems.
The ad program will cost an estimated $250,000 and is targeted at those enterprises deemed most likely to be attracted by Will County`s attributes, Fitzgerald said.
”This area never packaged itself,” she said. ”It just went along with the times. There was no planning.
”You`ve got to prepare for the future. You can`t make a study and then let it gather dust. You have to analyze your problems and then go out to solve them.
”That impresses companies seeking locations because that is the way they do business. They are constantly re-evaluating.”
During her tenure as economic development chief in Spartanburg, Fitzgerald said 60 foreign firms, 30 of them West German, opened facilities there, generating 7,000 jobs for American workers. She hopes to work a comparable miracle for Will County.
”In the last 24 months, 11 companies from eight nations already have opened facilities here, ranging from chemicals to food processing,” she said. ”They created 900 new jobs.”
Negotiations in a similar frame are underway with a West German engineering firm whose officials are being wooed to move their U.S. headquarters from New York City to downtown Joliet or elsewhere in the county. If the negotiations are successful, Fitzgerald said 50 employees would be hired locally and an additional 100 jobs would be created if the firm can also be persuaded to move a plant to the area.
In a bid to foster further foreign investment, the development center has initiated an international incubator program under which local businesses offer space to overseas firms seeking to open U.S. branches.
Although considered vital, not all of Will County`s targets for enhancing economic growth are overseas. Existing enterprises are constantly monitored to anticipate problems before a decision to leave the area is even considered.
”If you don`t take care of what you`ve got, you`ll soon find yourself unable to see any gain,” Fitzgerald said.
