In a scene that resembled Norman Rockwell — with a dose of Soviet realism thrown in — the northern Illinois community of Harvard started the new year with a town meeting in its quaint city hall.
The old-fashioned coffee-and-cookies gathering was held to let the citizenry speak its piece about Harvard’s future. Resident after resident of the countrified town rose to talk about the Harvard that was and the Harvard that could be. But the most significant thing about the meeting wasn’t what was said, but rather what wasn’t.
Not once during the two-hour meeting did the name of Motorola come up, even though the embattled electronics giant was once seen as the economic savior of this community of almost 8,000. Nor did the company have any representatives on hand. The big plant that Motorola brought to Harvard in 1994 is looking more and more like a shimmering monument to mismanagement, and the town, at least as far as this gathering was concerned, is back to square one in planning for its future.
“Everything is just so up in the air with Motorola, I don’t think anybody wants to count on anything,” said Nancy Heberle, executive director of Main Street, the economic development group in Harvard that called the meeting and is dedicated to revitalizing the downtown business section. “I’d like to think that maybe they’ll come out with a new product and get back on the ball. In the meantime, we have to just keep moving forward as best we can.”
Old John C. Galvin must have been spinning in his grave in Harvard’s St. Joseph Cemetery, which is only a brisk walk from the city hall. Galvin spent much of his life in Harvard, and, not so incidentally, was the patriarch of the family that started Motorola and has run it for three generations.
Galvin, who died in 1929, a year after the company was founded, was a derby-wearing local saloon-keeper who, according to an anonymous local historian writing in a town brochure, “brought up his children to toe the mark.” A contretemps between Harvard and Motorola would almost certainly cause him great chagrin.
But these days, Harvard officials are upset with the firm’s lack of communication over the plant’s — and, consequently, the town’s — future. They have become increasingly convinced that the Galvin-guided company, which is in dire financial trouble, has turned its back on the very town that the firm’s founders, John’s sons Paul and Joe, once called home.
“There’s definitely a growing level of frustration,” said Harvard city administrator David Nelson. “We know Motorola’s got problems, but so do we, and we’d like to know a little more about what the future holds so we can get on with planning.”
Appeal to the governor
A letter written by Harvard Mayor Ralph Henning, with the endorsement of most area public officials, is being sent to Gov. George Ryan asking him to seek a commitment from Schaumburg-based Motorola to keep the plant open. The letter says the company has “a moral and ethical responsibility” to do its best to that end.
There wasn’t enough room for all the VIPs to squeeze into the picture on the day eight years ago when Motorola announced it was opening a plant about a half mile north of Harvard (the town has since annexed the land it is on). But now, if there is a local metaphor for the company, it has to be the defunct building supply store sitting vacant across from the facility on U.S. Highway 14.
The vision of town fathers of hundreds of new residents streaming in to Harvard to work at the plant and buy homes has never materialized.
Building bust
About 150 homes, not much more than 15 percent of the projected total, actually got erected in three new subdivisions after it was announced that the plant was to be built. Developers were left holding the bag.
“I don’t think anyone who went to work [at the new plant] felt the job security was really enough for them to move here,” Heberle said, “and they just commuted from where ever they lived.”
Since August 2000, Motorola has laid off nearly one-third of its 150,000 employees. The Harvard plant, where cell phones were once produced before that task was moved overseas, has become a distribution point. In the process, approximately 80 per cent of the 5,000 people who were working there a little more than a year ago are gone.
Intriguingly, however, Harvard continues to experience steady growth, and went from 5,975 residents in 1990, according to U.S. census figures, to its present count of 7,996.
“It’s a town growing in population in spite of itself,” said Bert Stitt, a Wisconsin-based consultant hired three years ago to help Harvard pull together an economic development program. “All you have to do is look at the map and see the population is coming right up the highway (U.S. 14).
“The town can get overrun and lose [its] identity and integrity like a Crystal Lake, but there is still a chance to keep things under control,” Stitt added. “Harvard has the potential to rise above the problems and this is a very crucial time for thoughtful dialogue.
“I think everyone thought Motorola would be some sort of panacea, but I gather there’s been a shift in that thinking.”
Harvard is the last stop on Metra’s Northwest Line and many newcomers are professionals, who are lured by cheaper homes and willing to put up with the 65-mile commute to Chicago. Early on weekday mornings, more than 200 riders, some from as far away as Wisconsin, board Loop-bound trains.
Heavily Hispanic
The only downtown spot that can rival the train station for activity is Fiesta Foods, a large supermarket that, with Spanish-speaking staff and three of its eight aisles devoted to Latino specialty items, is a regional magnet for Hispanics. Nearly 40 per cent of the local population is, in fact, Mexican-American.
Most of Harvard’s retail services, including a Wal-Mart, are on the south edge of town on U.S. 14. Meaningful downtown commerce has shriveled in past decades — even as the population grew — and three years ago the Main Street organization was formed in a revitalization effort.
“You went to town for everything when I was a kid and didn’t drive as much as everyone does today,” said Dick Crone, raised on a small farm near Harvard. Though now a Dean Foods executive, he still raises livestock and crops on the same acreage.
“There were three or four grocery stores, a couple of five-and-dime stores, two or three soda fountains and several clothing and hardware stores too,” he added. “Now everyone does their serious shopping in places like Rockford, Crystal Lake or even Schaumburg.”
Heberle said Main Street’s overall goal is to prevent Harvard from becoming a bedroom community dominated by strip malls. She pointed to Huntley, another fast-growing McHenry County city, as a comparable community that has kept pace with growth.
In addition to trying to entice businesses to locate in Harvard’s downtown, Main Street also plans a calendar of social events in 2002 to foster more community spirit. The influx of newcomers, including the Mexican-American population, which tends to keep to itself, has created an unfamiliar mix for older residents.
“There are many little things that would help, like repainting signs and better landscaping,” said Rev. Roberto Barreto, of Harvard’s Iglesia Hispana Pentecostal Church. “We look like an old town and nothing is fresh. There are lots of nice people here, but not much to do.”
Barreto was among those at January’s town meeting. The absence of Motorola reps at that meeting was not the town’s choice. City officials would like very much to have some sort of dialogue with the company.
In the 1 1/2 years that local attorney Joel Berg has served on the City Council, a period in which the Harvard plant has been rocked by its biggest setbacks, the only time Berg can recall someone from Motorola attending a meeting, or communicating in any way, was to take part in an award presentation.
“They simply don’t talk to us,” he said. “We have to learn what goes on out there along with everyone else by reading the newspaper, which makes it very difficult.”
Everyone’s in the loop
Sue Frederick, a Motorola spokeswoman, maintained that the firm’s “typical standard operating procedure” has been to keep everyone in the loop.
“Whenever we do make a decision, we notify local officials whether that decision has been made or is about to be announced to employees,” she said.
Frederick could produce no one from Motorola who had ever taken part in the process. The company has kept everyone in the loop, however, on another issue — its desire to get its property taxes lowered as a reflection of its troubles.
To the relief of local officials, when the plant’s assessed value was lowered last month in the latest round of appeals, the decline was less than the company had sought.
The abatements are watched closely, explained Harvard District 50 Supt. Randy Gross, because of an upcoming referendum to build a new high school. The schools are so crowded that some classes are taught in hallways and cafeterias.
“The problem of crowding is with us, no matter what happens with Motorola, and it makes it harder for us if they continue to get their rates abated,” Gross said. “That means everyone’s taxes go up to make up the difference and that makes it harder to pass the referendum.
“It would be very helpful if we knew something about the direction Motorola is headed. We could do some long-range planning — if they told us anything. We all have a stake in this.”
Declining tax revenues
State Rep. Jack Franks (D-Woodstock), whose district includes Harvard, isn’t hopeful the city will get anywhere with its letter to Ryan to intercede. Franks got a bill passed in the Illinois House that would require Motorola, if it shutters the plant, to pay back millions of dollars in incentives received to locate there.
Franks’ legislation sailed through the House only to get torpedoed by Ryan, an indication he thinks of how much support can expected from the governor.
“This, quite simply, is a town that sees its tax base shrinking and a company that hasn’t created the jobs it promised,” he said. “As a result, the people left in town are going to have to raise their taxes while the company goes on to another deal. Some people have had enough.”
After serving in World War I and going into the storage battery business, Paul Galvin formed the Galvin Manufacturing Co. in Chicago with brother Joe in 1928.
The company’s pioneer work with car radios had made it a giant by 1935, when it was renamed Motorola. In World War II, the firm gained more renown with its invention of the “walkie-talkie” communication system used in combat.
One who stayed behind
But all that time, while Paul and Joe were busy making Motorola into a global leader, and while Paul’s son, Robert, was extending its reach after assuming the company mantle in 1959 (he passed it on to his son, Christopher, in 1993) a third son of Big John Galvin remained in Harvard his entire life.
He was Raymond “Burley” Galvin, a lifelong bachelor and executive vice president of the Harvard State Bank, where he worked 62 years almost up to the day he died at age 83 in 1980.
“He was an institution here,” Crone recalled. “Everyone knew Burley down at the bank.”
While his more famous relatives were jetting around the world, Burley, at a celebration marking his 50th year at the bank, told a newspaper reporter that “it was the joy of working with people and living in a small town and knowing everybody” that kept him in Harvard.
So, if John Galvin isn’t spinning in his grave over the way family-run Motorola has treated Harvard, Uncle Burley, also buried in St. Joseph Cemetery, certainly is uncomfortable.
