Tales off Ten Cities

By Maureen Dowd

With wit and grit, Midwestern communities try to cope

"Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation."

Carl Sandburg's description of Chicago at the beginning of the century was every bit as accurate for the rest of the Midwest. With its raw energy and perpetual motion, the nation's heartland was synonymous with prosperous cities. Over the years, Chicago became identified with hogs, Toledo with glass, Detroit with automobiles, Akron with rubber. Youngstown with steel, Peoria with Caterpillar tractors.Today, however, in the cities that once were flagships of the region, unemployment has risen higher than in any other area of the U.S. Hit first and hardest by the recession, the Midwest may be the last region in the country to recover. Nonetheless, there are signs everywhere of a stubborn spirit and resilience. Here's a sampler of how ten Midwest cities are coping:

CHICAGO. Sandburg's "City of the Big Shoulders" (pop. 3 million) has become schizophrenic. In this updated tale of two cities, one is prospering, the other increasingly depressed. For the latter, officials are trying to speed up a successful shift from heavy industry to a finance and service economy. "Chicago has known for 25 years that its future was not going to be based on steel mills or stockyards," says Louis Masotti, a Northwestern University political scientist. "What is happening is a realignment of priorities and of purpose."

Downtown, new office towers rise in curvilinear splendor. On the West Side, the first of a series of high-tech parks has opened, with two genetic-technology firms as the first tenants. Plans for the 1992 World's Fair are under way. Indeed, a local business publication predicts a spirited upturn this year and says the long-term future looks even brighter. Still, in the other part of Chicago, the old world of smokestacks and stockyards, the recession dominates. The city has lost 160,000 jobs in the past decade, mostly in manufacturing. The steel mills that rim Lake Michigan from Chicago to Burns Harbor, Ind., are idling. Giant International Harvester, long one of the city's most robust corporations, is on the brink of bankruptcy, and the aging Wisconsin Steel plant has closed. Unemployment stands at 12.8%, with 190,967 people out of work More than 20,000 applied for 3,800 temporary jobs offered by Mayor Jane Byrne earlier this month. The state of Illinois' projected $200 million cash shortfall is certain to affect the city adversely.

CLEVELAND. In 1978, after Cleveland became the first major American city since the Depression to go into default, even Clevelanders began telling Cleveland jokes. Sample: What's the difference between Cleveland and the Titanic? Cleveland has a better orchestra. Now, however, the city can also boast about the enthusiasm of Mayor George Voinovich, which has helped trigger a new civic pride and a modest building boom. Standard Oil Co. of Ohio is constructing its new headquarters near Lake Erie. At 46 floors, it will be the state's largest office building. New towers are rising for Ohio Bell and the Medical Mutual Center, too. But despite the signs of life, Cleveland's manufacturing base has weakened; 84,000 blue-collar jobs have been lost since 1968. As in most other big cities, young people, especially blacks and other minorities, are suffering disproportionately. The youth unemployment rate has risen to 38%, from 24% in 1979, and, for minority youth, to almost 53%, from 33%. Says Voinovich: "Keeping people alive has become our No. 1 responsibility. Everything else we want to do has been pushed down the list."

While trying to attract new industry, local officials are also struggling to spruce up the city. City planners estimate that Cleveland (pop. 574,000) will need to invest at least $1.2 billion just to repair and rehabilitate its roads, bridges and water system. Plagued by school-system deficits, the city is facing a shortfall of $20 million next year. But the ever optimistic mayor insists there is a greener future beyond the blue-collar blues.

DAVENPORT. Shortly before Christmas, an anonymous donor sent checks for $4,000 each to eight Catholic parishes in Iowa's Davenport area with instructions to use the money to hire unemployed parishioners. The giveaway was about the only good news to come out of Davenport (pop. 103,000) in 1982. The city is part of an industrial oasis on the border between Iowa and Illinois, surrounded by fertile farm land and overlooking the Mississippi River, that includes Iowa's Bettendorf and Rock Island and Illinois' Moline. The Quad Cities region, as it is called, has a 17.5% unemployment rate now, but only two years ago the area was booming, seemingly insulated from the country's economic ups and downs. However, high interest rates and low crop prices hit farmers hard at the same time that the national economic malaise was drying up the market for the Quad Cities' most important industrial products: heavy construction equipment and farm implements. The cities' major employers, Deere, International Harvester, J.I. Case, Caterpillar and Alcoa, have laid off thousands of workers. On Jan. 4, some 1,800 people showed up to apply for 250 jobs at a packing plant in nearby Joslin, Ill. Says Congressman Jim Leach, who represents Davenport in Congress: "The Quad Cities will never recover until agricultural prices go up and inflation goes down."

DETROIT. When the Lions played the Washington Redskins in the first round of the N.F.L. playoffs, Detroit sportscasters suggested throwing the football game. "Let's not rile Washington any more," cautioned one radio announcer. "We need a win in Congress more than we need a win for the Lions." The Motor City has got neither. With unemployment at 20% overall, and nearly 35% for blacks, Mayor Coleman Young last month declared a "hunger emergency." City agencies estimate that as many as one-third of the city's 1.2 million residents go to bed hungry every night. The Federal Government sent 17,000 lbs. of frozen turkeys, but Young wants money more than poultry. He warned that some cities and states face bankruptcy unless Washington loosens the purse strings. Said the mayor: "It seems as if Washington doesn't know what's going on. I don't understand what planet they are on."

Shrinking revenues from payroll taxes and corporate taxes, as well as cuts in state and federal aid, have created a $40 million budget deficit for Detroit. U.S. auto companies sold fewer cars in 1982 than at any time in the past two decades leaving 270,000 workers laid off indefinitely. Downtown Detroit is a battered shell. The mainstay of its retail establishment, J.L. Hudson, closed last week after 92 years. Renaissance Center, the Oz-like hotel and office showplace on Detroit's river front, which was to be the centerpiece of its urban renewal, defaulted two weeks ago and is still up for sale (asking price: $275 million, down from $500 million last spring). One bright spot in a dreary year: a revival in the inner city, with old office buildings being transformed into condominium apartments. Says Developer Max Fisher, who has invested in a $77 million apartment complex on the Detroit River: "To make downtown shopping viable, we need to have people living there."

FORT WAYNE. When the Maumee, St. Marys and St. Joseph rivers flooded last March, 60,000 residents of this flat, industrial city took to the riverbanks, stacking sandbags at a rate of 25,000 an hour to contain most of the overflow. Even Ronald Reagan joined the sandbag brigade for a while. The effort curtailed the severity of the flood and captured the imagination of the country. Fort Wayne (pop. 172,000) became known as "the city that saved itself."

Now this family-oriented blue-collar city faces a challenge that is hardly less dramatic: coping with an ebbing economic tide. Poor demand for products of the area's manufacturing-based economy has boosted the unemployment rate to 11.8%.

In September, International Harvester, the city's second-largest employer, decided to reduce production drastically, scuttling 1,500 jobs over the next year. But the loss was a "cloud with a silver lining of great depth," insists Mayor Winfield Moses, who helped launch a spirited campaign to diversify the city's economy, save and expand existing businesses and lure new industry. Moses created the city's first economic development department. Taking advantage of publicity about the flood, the department has begun inviting companies to locate in "the city that saved itself." Bids are soon to be let on a $24 million convention center. The local Chamber of Commerce is planning a five-year marketing strategy to create new high-technology jobs. Says Moses: "This was really a status quo community for the past two decades. We've got to change. We're trying to do something about it."

MILWAUKEE. In this city, 1982 will be remembered as a black year. Schlitz, the beer that made Milwaukee famous, was no longer brewed in town. The company shut the brewery in 1981 because of falling demand. Then Schlitz left town for good when the Stroh Brewery Co. of Detroit acquired it. The loss of the hometown brewery was a severe psychological blow. Another Milwaukee tradition, the Harley-Davidson motorcycle company, has been outgunned by Japanese competition. Until this recession, Milwaukee (pop. 636,000) had prospered through fair economic times and foul. Its unemployment rate, along with Wisconsin's, was historically lower than the national average. Now it is higher: 13.4% for the city (11.5% for the state). Layoffs and plant closings in the city, which used to call itself the "machine shop of the world," have left residents bitter and dispirited with 50,000 out of work.

More than 20,000 people lined up in 20DEG weather last week to apply for 200 jobs at an auto-frame factory. The growing number of previously middle-class families who now need public assistance has prompted strapped Milwaukee County to consider programs to discourage people from going on welfare. One proposal, known as "two hots and a cot," would have provided welfare recipients with a place to sleep and two meals a day instead of cash grants. More than 80 food pantries where the needy can get emergency food have sprung up throughout the city. Says Barbara Notestein of Milwaukee's hunger task force: "We've never had the kind of demand for emergency food that we're experiencing now." In 1982, the only highlights were the opening of the city's snazzy $70 million glass-and-steel downtown mall, and the pennant-winning performance of the Milwaukee Brewers. Alas, or perhaps predictably in this down year for Milwaukee, they lost the World Series.

MINNEAPOLIS-ST. PAUL. It has often been named one of the country's most livable locales, and it continues to be so. Unlike many other Midwestern hubs, the Twin Cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul (pop. 641,000) are thriving on a good economic mix. Moving beyond such staples as Pillsbury Co. and the Cargill Inc. grain company, adventurous entrepreneurs are founding new businesses in electronics and biotechnology, making the area a good candidate to become the Silicon Valley of the Midwest. Top-of-the-line boutiques, trendy restaurants, fine art and music flourish amid Minneapolis' gleaming high-rise towers and the restored Victorian houses of St. Paul. Unemployment is 7.4%, the highest since the Depression but still well below the national average.

But the recession has cast its shadow. Residents have experienced a spate of problems in recent months, ranging from such largely symbolic blows as the collapse of the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome Stadium roof to a deeply worrisome and basic one: the state's deteriorating financial condition. Farm bankruptcies, once practically nonexistent, are on the rise. Growing unemployment has caused state revenues to plummet, and lawmakers have raised taxes twice in the past year. A billion-dollar revenue shortfall in the next two years is predicted for the state. Says a concerned construction worker who has been employed for only twelve weeks in the past year: "I feel like everything is closing in on us all at once."

OMAHA. Grocer Phil Morrison is offering his unemployed customers a 5% discount on their food bills in his three stores on the North Side. "We hope to keep it going only as long as needed," Morrison says. In pinched days as well as prosperous, Omaha folk pride themselves on their friendliness and pioneer spirit. Nebraska's largest city (pop. 312,000) has a 7.7% unemployment rate, up from 4.9% last year, high by Omaha standards, but lower than in most other major Midwestern cities. Once better known for the rank odor of the stockyards, which occupied most of the south side, than for any other attribute, Omaha began nudging its economy into new avenues years ago. Today, only one of every eight jobs in the area is related to manufacturing. Its largest employer, the Strategic Air Command of the U.S. Air Force, provides more than 13,000 fairly recession-proof jobs for military and civilian workers. Other large firms, such as the Union Pacific Railroad Co. and Mutual of Omaha insurance, have kept their work forces essentially intact.

ST. LOUIS. When the 1980 census figures were revealed, St. Louis seemed to be down for the count. Statistics showed that during the 1970s its population (453,000) had dropped more, proportionately, than any other major city's--a finding that cost St. Louis millions of dollars in federal aid.

Jolted by the news, the city launched a booster campaign that has helped it endure the economic slump. A downtown building boom has catapulted it into the nation's top six cities for new construction. Projects under way include a four-story mall that will be the largest enclosed shopping center in the country.

Despite its best efforts at morale building, the city is hurting. For years the nation's second-largest automobile assembly center, St. Louis was devastated by the slump that hit the car industry in 1979. Unemployment is at 11%. A General Motors plant in the city, which once manufactured everything from pickup trucks to Corvettes and provided jobs for 10,000, now employs only 1,400. Chrysler Corp. closed its truck plant in nearby Fenton, throwing 4,300 people onto the street. There are some signs, however, that St. Louis may have more to cheer about next year than the World Series-winning Cardinals: Chrysler is adding a new shift of 1,700 to its Fenton auto assembly plant, anticipating a brisk demand for its new line of G24 sports cars.

WICHITA. Four years ago, this community's fortunes were so high that its main problem was finding enough workers to accept its jobs. A bustling producer of meat, wheat, planes, oil and gas, Wichita (pop. 279,000) had the remarkably low unemployment rate of 2.8%. With rows of aerospace plants and enormous grain elevators rising from the prairies, it exuded a robust self-confidence. But the aircraft industry, as well as others, nosedived. More than 20,000 workers were laid off, and the unemployment rate is now 8.5%. "If we can just get people through the next six to nine months, things will be a lot better," says Don Anderson, director of the city's housing and economic-development program.

City fathers regard their current problems as a temporary setback and are banking on Wichita's diversified aircraft industry to ignite a new takeoff. Beech Aircraft, Cessna and Gates Learjet serve the general aviation market, while production at Boeing, the city's largest employer, is 55% defense related. Boeing and Beech reportedly plan to hire 8,000 more employees over the next few years. Unlike many other Midwest cities, Wichita may need no major economic retooling. Says Jerry Mallot, a Chamber of Commerce official: "Much of our industry is in the high-tech area. We don't produce steel or autos. We have the products of the future." --By Maureen Dowd. Reported by Barbara B. Dolan/Detroit and J. Madeline Nash/Chicago

With reporting by Barbara B. Dolan, J. MADELEINE NASH This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.