#Factory town drawing how to#

Which is where the Gundlach gift comes in. And it did - but each recovery is always a little weaker than the one before, and the next dip, when it comes, will be even lower. Instead, it remained sure the industry would come back. When RVs nosedived in 2009, Elkhart didn’t get the message that it should diversify. It’s an isolated place, disdainful of neighbors like South Bend, only 15 miles away, and hostile to regional cooperation.Īnd it suffers from a complacency born of that feast-and-famine RV cycle. Unlike most industrial counties, it’s hotly anti-union and Republican. First, it has all its economic eggs in the manufacturing and RV baskets. Elkhart’s future may depend on how the latest RV boom affects this windfall.Įlkhart is different in several ways. The second good thing, of course, is the Gundlach gift. Right now, after a four-year famine, the feast is back.

The unemployment rate is about 8.5 percent, still above the national average and well above its pre-recession rate of 4.7 percent, but a whole lot better than 20 percent.Įverybody in Elkhart knows that RVs are a feast-or-famine industry. At last report, the plant was moribund.īut then two good things happened. It promised 400 jobs but created only 25 before Think Global went bankrupt and was bought by a Russian. The city eventually got $41 million in stimulus money, enough to make some needed infrastructure improvements.Ī Norwegian-owned electric car company called Think Global also got $17 million in federal tax credits to build a factory in Elkhart. President Obama’s first post-election trip in 2009 was to Elkhart. For a while in 2009, it had 20.3 percent unemployment, the nation’s highest. When the industry collapsed, so did Elkhart. The industry turned out 390,000 RVS in 2006 and only 160,000 in 2009: 60 percent of all RVS are made in Elkhart County. People buy RVs when they have spare cash, so the recession clobbered the RV industry and Elkhart. It’s the most manufacturing-dependent county in the country. Manufacturing employs only 7 percent of American workers today in Elkhart, manufacturing accounts for 43 percent of all jobs, mostly in RVS and auto parts. Its economy rests largely on the recreational vehicle industry. It’s an odd place, in ways that complicate its use of Gundlach’s gift. Goshen (32,000) is the county seat but Elkhart (51,000) is the biggest town. More likely, it will have some impact but less than it could.Įlkhart County is in northern Indiana, on the Michigan state line, just east of South Bend. The Gundlach-Elkhart story has received surprisingly sparse national attention. In many ways, those guidelines pose more questions than they answer. The Foundation has set guidelines for spending its money. The results of that year’s study are out now. Elkhart knows these stories and has spent the past year in an intense community discussion to avoid its own civic hangover.

One economic development official in town told me that “it’s like winning the lottery.” We’ve all read stories about lottery winners who blew their windfall and ended up in the gutter, wiser and much sadder.

#Factory town drawing how to#

Now Elkhart has to decide how to spend this money.