Battered industrial city of Longview steels itself for future

By Hal Bernton
Seattle Times staff reporter

	GREG GILBERT / THE SEATTLE TIMES Burgess Bouchard, left, a 27-year former smelter employee, chats with Ben Fenison in the library at Longview's Lower Columbia Community College. Bouchard, who was a mechanic at the plant, says he anticipates having to relocate to find work.

But the plant is now shuttered. And Trople, who at 57 is afflicted with asbestosis that has nipped off a part of his lung, is hunting for work. He tried a grocery warehouse, auto-parts store, farm-machinery company, door-manufacturing plant and a multitude of other businesses. So far, no luck.

"As far as a job goes, no one will touch me," Trople said.

Cowlitz County profile  Manufacturing wages decline  Property values stagnate  Cowlitz County unemployment rates

Trople is a member of a small army of more than 1,000 industrial workers laid off during the past two years in Longview and surrounding Cowlitz County. The layoffs from the smelter and steel, paper and wood mills have sliced off about 15 percent of the manufacturing jobs that have long been the family-wage backbone of this gritty port town along the Columbia River.

Unemployment for the first six months of this year averaged 11.1 percent, well above the statewide average of 7.4 percent.

With its prime river views and cheap real estate, Longview could become a town full of commuters who drive 40 miles south to the employment hubs of Vancouver and Portland. But Longview is determined to avoid that fate. Rather than build new subdivisions, the city wants to land new industries.

"We don't want to become a bedroom community," said City Manager Ed Ivey. "We'll invite the people who live in Vancouver to come work here."

Blue-collar history

Longview, with a population of not quite 35,000, is nothing if not blue-collar. This city is situated in the heavily timbered hill country of Southwest Washington, and was founded in the 1920s to house millworkers. By the decade's end, Longview boasted the two largest lumber mills in the world — one built by Weyerhaeuser and the other by Long-Bell Lumber.

GREG GILBERT / THE SEATTLE TIMES Hoping to lure jobs back, Longview has invested $14 million in a 435-acre industrial park carved out of a former mint field along the Columbia River. The park, which opened in 1998, has met with mixed success so far. The city is seeking more occupants.

During World War II, the city's industrial base expanded to include an aluminum smelter hooked into cheap power provided by the federal dams along the Columbia, and the port emerged as a major Northwest hub for bulk cargoes.

The Longview economy was beat down by the thunderous, destructive eruption in 1980 of nearby Mount St. Helens, which was a major setback to the timber industry, and then the early '80s recession. But it appeared to be on the rebound in the '90s, with the average median household income rising 9 percent and unemployment staying in single digits for most of the decade.

The factory jobs might not be as glamorous as Seattle's high-tech, but they kept families afloat. And young Longview workers — unlike their Seattle counterparts — can easily become homeowners, with the occasional starter cottages still priced at less than $35,000.

But for the past two years, the unemployment rate has averaged in double digits. And foreclosures, which nobody even bothered to track before, have averaged 30 to 40 a month, according to the Cowlitz County assessor.

Smelter workers in limbo

The March 2001 closure of the Longview smelter proved to be the biggest blow, resulting in the layoff of more than 900 workers. It's unclear whether the smelter will ever reopen and profitably compete with the aluminum now flooding into U.S. markets from Russia and other overseas markets.

Financier Michael Lynch is chairman of Michigan Avenue Partners. It purchased the smelter, now called Longview Aluminum, from Alcoa in February 2001. Lynch says it's possible the smelter will reopen if he gets labor concessions from the unions. But negotiations over a new contract have broken down, with unions accusing Lynch of trying to gut long-standing labor agreements.

	GREG GILBERT / THE SEATTLE TIMES Ted Trople stands in an empty parking lot at the shuttered Longview aluminum smelter, where he operated cranes for 34 years. The plant closed last year.

So many smelter workers dwell in a kind of limbo, cut off from the structured daily routines — and camaraderie — of plant life. Instead of banking paychecks, they collect unemployment.

Compared with many of the younger workers, Trople feels fortunate. Due to his seniority, he was able to work maintenance during 13 months of the shutdown before finally losing his job — with a base pay of $15.27 an hour — in April. He's already helped his three children through college, taking out a second mortgage on his farm to help them pay expenses. And if all else fails, he can fall back on some $25,000 a year in farm income and claim a modest pension of about $900 a month.

But he wants to keep working at a job that can offer health benefits to help cope with the medical expenses of his asbestosis. He says he contracted the disease from exposure at the plant but remains in litigation with the former plant operator — Reynolds Aluminum — over the cause. Meanwhile, he thinks his illness causes potential employers to shy away from giving him a job.

Trople, a vice president of the local United Steelworkers chapter, spends a few days a week at the union hall, where other workers drop by to fill out paperwork and grab the latest scraps of news about the possibility of the plant reopening. When asked for advice, he says he's planning to go back to school and counsels them to do the same. So far, some have balked at taking advantage of retraining funds offered through two separate pots of federal money.

"A lot of them have been doing this for 20 or 30 years, and everyone reaches a comfort zone," Trople said. "They've got their life stable and don't want to reach out of their little shell."

Heading back to school

Some steelworkers have made the big decision to quit the smelter. Many are enrolled at Longview's Lower Columbia Community College, a small campus spread out along a main avenue on the north side of town, just across the street from two empty stores that once housed Newberry's and Montgomery Ward.

At the college, things are booming. Last spring, the college tallied some 320 students who tap into the federal funds for worker retraining. And they've pushed the overall student population to 10 percent over the state-funded enrollment.

College officials say the laid-off workers often struggle to readjust to classes — but many view school as a second chance and are eager to succeed. In a stroll around campus, they are easy to spot. They're older, often beefy and male, and apt to be hunched over a textbook in the lunchroom while younger students gab with friends.

"I feel like I'm headed in the right direction," said Troy Goldner, a 29-year-old former smelter worker. "My old job was hot, dirty, nasty work. I used to think it was my retirement job — good for 30 years. But you can't depend on smelters anymore."

Goldner is studying to be a diesel mechanic.

Others are looking for more radical career changes, enrolling in science courses in hopes of getting into the college's nursing school. But that may be tough to accomplish, with more than 115 applicants vying for the nursing school's 20 open spots for the fall quarter. The influx of applicants appears to reflect growing interest in a profession desperately short of qualified workers, where a job on graduation is almost guaranteed.

"Locally, there's plenty of jobs," said Monty Multanen, a recently retired college dean. "We're being urged to expand our nursing school."

But the Longview job prospects are bleak for graduates who opt for welding, machine-shop, electronics and other technical degrees.

Working to bring jobs back

City officials, however, are hoping to create more jobs through a $14 million investment in an industrial park carved out of a former mint field along the Columbia River. The money has paid for water, sewer, streets and other improvements to portions of the 435-acre site.

The park is a bold move to buck an industrial decline that has thrown not only Longview a curve ball but towns just like it across the United States. The park boasts ready access to rails and international shipping, as well as special tax incentives.

"There are very few permitted, heavy-industrial parks on the West Coast that have significant acreage available," said Ivey, the city manager. "We have it, and we're ready to go."

The park opened in 1998, and so far has met with mixed success.

Prudential Steel built a plant that employed 125 people. But the plant shut down earlier this year after a change in ownership of the parent company.

But Mirant, an Atlanta-based energy company, is building a $200 million, gas-fired power plant at the Longview park that will employ up to 50 people. And Toyocom of Japan built a small facility to manufacture synthetic crystals that opened in 2001 and shut down last spring.

Ivey is eager for more investment, such as a proposal by Nordic Biofuels, a Midwestern company, to build an ethanol fuel distillery at a port site.

Ivey also is prodding state officials to step up efforts to promote Washington to investors. He joined Gov. Gary Locke on a trade mission last month to Japan and Korea. While in Japan, Locke pressed Toyocom to reopen the Longview crystal plant, and the company now says it will resume operations this fall, according to Ivey.

Locke and Ivey also pressed Toyocom to follow through on an expansion plan to further refine crystals at the Longview plant for use in computer chips, a process that could employ several hundred people.

"I thought this was a great trip to Asia, and the governor did a marvelous job," Ivey said.

"During the '90s, the economy was doing so well that we kind of got the idea we didn't need to do it (economic development)," Ivey said. "Right now, we don't hold a candle to places like Mississippi and Arkansas — the places that used to be considered backwaters — in the promotion game."

Others still doubt whether Longview will ever regain the lost jobs.

"They're kind of dreaming," said Burgess Bouchard, a former smelter worker now enrolled at the college. "I do believe when I get through with my school, I will have to relocate. And the age of 60, that's not something I look forward to. That's something you do to survive."