BEATRICE, Neb. — August 11 -- Terri Dageford was vacationing in Arizona in May when she checked her voice mail: Husqvarna planned to close its lawn mower and power equipment plant by the end of the year, throwing 390 people out of work.
Dageford, director of business and industry for Gage County Economic Development, spent most of that day on the phone, alerting the mayor of Beatrice, state officials and others.
“Out of all our companies, we did not see this coming,” she said.
Husqvarna is consolidating operations worldwide, and that includes shifting its Beatrice production to facilities in South Carolina.
It’s the kind of story that has played out across Nebraska many times since the recession began, resulting in the loss of 8,000 manufacturing jobs since 2008.
Many high-profile losses have occurred at major employers in small towns, such as Newell Rubbermaid’s Vise-Grip plant in DeWitt, which eliminated 350 jobs in that village of 550 when production moved to China. Or the Tenneco auto parts manufacturing plant in Cozad, population 4,300, which once employed as many as 500 people.
Over-reliance on one industry can make small towns particularly vulnerable, and the solutions include diversification and collaborating with other towns and counties to attract businesses, approaches that Beatrice is embracing.
Heavily dependent for years on Husqvarna and its in-town rival Exmark, which together employ more than 700 people, Beatrice officials hope a new hospital and health center scheduled to open next year will draw technology and medical businesses.
A new National Guard and Reserve center opening this fall should bring nonresidents, and their money, into town for training sessions.
Economic development officials also are working with regional groups to step up recruitment of Midwest companies most likely to move to a rural area.
“You can’t recruit somebody from Chicago and expect them to like Beatrice,” Dageford said. “It’s not going to work unless they have roots here.”
Beatrice, with a population of 12,564, is only the 14th largest city in the state, but it draws people to its stores and businesses from a nine-county area in Nebraska and across the border into Kansas.
The downtown area extends several blocks in four directions from the intersection of Highways 77 and 136, and it includes a live community theater, home decorating store, gift shop and pharmacy, and the Holly movie theater, which this week was showing the new Will Farrell comedy “The Other Guys.”
But manufacturing makes up about 20 percent of Beatrice’s economy, officials say, and since 2008 as many as 400 people have been out of work at one time or another.
Beatrice is the county seat and largest city in Gage County, which last year had a 6.3 percent unemployment rate, the third-highest in the state. Husqvarna’s closing in December could push the jobless rate to 8 percent, whereas unemployment in the state overall has gradually declined and in June stood at 4.8 percent.
Filling the plant is a top priority, Dageford said, but short of that it could take more than a year for all its workers to find jobs in the area.
Eating lunch at a sandwich shop, Bruce Cooper, director of sales at Exmark, said he was concerned about keeping the duplex he owns occupied if people move out of Beatrice to seek jobs elsewhere.
Exmark isn’t closing, but the cyclical nature of lawn mower manufacturing means the company lays off workers after the busy winter months. Layoffs of one or two weeks in the summer or fall are typical, but this year Exmark idled all but a handful of its 365 workers for the entire month of August.
Tyler Berry, manager of human resources at Exmark, said more people are repairing or making do with their old lawn mowers rather than buying new machines.
And there have been job losses at other companies.
A biodiesel plant that was to turn soybeans into fuel never opened and now sits empty. It filed for bankruptcy protection and laid off more than 20 workers two years ago.
Nineteen people lost their jobs when North American Containers Corp. closed its Beatrice shop in 2008. That same year, Hoover Materials Handling also closed, a loss of six more jobs.
“It’s a little sour, I think, right now,” said Mayor Dennis Schuster. “It’s a recession when my neighbor is out of work, it’s a depression when I’m out of work. The feeling is spreading that, ‘Now I’m afraid it will hit me.’”
Sales tax receipts in Beatrice have declined more than 5 percent from two years ago, though they improved over the last few months, said City Administrator Neal Niedfeldt.
The city postponed some purchases, such as street sweepers and trucks, but it finished some street projects, Niedfeldt said. It will replace an aging sewage pump to better service the industrial park, he said.
There are some signs of recovery, and Sen. Mike Johanns, R-Neb., came here this week to tout the good news.
Accuma Corp. plans to add six workers to its 49-employee battery components plant on the north edge of town.
Custom cabinet manufacturer Store Kraft laid off 68 of its 145 workers last September but has hired most of them back and hopes to add 20 more employees over the next two years.
Neapco, which laid off 33 workers early last year, now plans to add 90 jobs over the next two years, bringing total employment at its vehicle components plant to 210 as the company shifts production from a plant in Pennsylvania.
Those are good signs, Schuster and Niedfeldt said.
“You just keep working,” Schuster said. “And you never stop promoting.”
