Looking past this we also see that Lordstown, Ohio is pinning it's hopes on the Cruze. GM's next little car similar to the long lived Cavalier and short lived Cobalt. Want to know a little history on Lordstown? I know you do...
This is from the Detroit News Online:
Lordstown
Taking Exit 215 off the Ohio Turnpike, you can't miss the GM plant. At 5 million square feet, it overshadows the community, and at times has had more employees than Lordstown has residents.
The city has a couple of convenience stores, a gas station and a small business strip with a dollar store and a Subway shop. At Lordstown High School, where the graduating class this year had 28 students, there's no football field or outdoor track. American cars sit in the driveways. More than 70 percent of the town's tax revenue comes from workers at the plant, and the town has been forced to cut some of its part-time employees.
"It causes a lot of strain," said Chaffee, the mayor. "Three times more houses are for sale in our community (since 2008), and what used to be a number in the teens is now 75. It's kind of a slow-drip death for our whole area. Hardly a week goes by that you don't find out someone in the area is cutting 60, 70, 80 jobs. In the old days, they would always say the cuts were temporary."
California Pizza and Things pizzeria and convenience store, about a mile from the plant, gleans more than half of its business from factory workers, owner Mark McGrail said. To cope with declining income, McGrail and his wife, Rita, have cut costs: They have laid off all but one employee, picked up their goods instead of having them delivered, kept most of the lights turned off and turned the heat down in the winter. Conversation over the register is almost always the same.
"It just seems like everyone is laid off, or someone in their family is laid off, and it's not just those who work in the plant," Rita McGrail said.
The hopes of Lordstown.
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