Ford Edison plant, Sad!!

Lots of pics of the wreckage here:

(56K'rs Stay in the cave)

http://24.229.165.154:18888/

I can't believe they are tearing this plant down already. Did Mahwah get torn down this quick too?

Another sad day for US industry.

Mahwah sat idle from about 1981 to 1985 when it was torn down.

I guess real estate in New Jersey is so valuable (and property taxes so high) that it just didn't pay to have a huge tract of land with an idle factory on it.

The American Cyanamid Plant in Bound Brook came down quickly as well, probably for the same reason.

I think there was a buyer for the Ford Edison site while it was still in operation. That's what got the town to move so quickly.

There was an article in one of the local papers (Hackensack Record, maybe) that the payroll at the Ford Mahwah site is now much greater and far more people are employed than worked there under Ford.

Sharp has a big marketing and engineering site, Community Coach does a lot of bus service, repairs, Sheraton has a hotel, etc.

The only problem, Lackawanna, is that the average wage (adjusted for inflation) for the new businesses at the Mahwah site are undoubtedly less than they were when Ford was there.

The problem in Mahwah then and now, is the NIMBYs of Mahwah not wanting to rezone the old Ford Plant property so it can be better utilized.
I personally was involved in trying to get rezoning done at a time when the rest of International Crossroads {still empty} could have been developed and provided quite a nice tax base.

what will this mean for rail service in the area. will ns lose considerable car loads? what about the trackage that crosses rt 1 by the plant. will it be abandoned?

carajul wrote:what will this mean for rail service in the area. will ns lose considerable car loads? what about the trackage that crosses rt 1 by the plant. will it be abandoned?

The Route One Crossing leads to Raritan Center by the EPA office on Rt 514 & the Heller industrial park that's south of Middlesex community college. I don't think they will abandon that.

carajul wrote:what will this mean for rail service in the area. will ns lose considerable car loads? what about the trackage that crosses rt 1 by the plant. will it be abandoned?

The plant was closed several months ago. I'm pretty sure that CSX lost 1 eastbound autorack train and 1 westbound. However, I do think NS still uses the storage yard that was adjacent to the plant....I think the NS train was 14G? Anyone know if it still runs??

Steve

JoeG wrote:The only problem, Lackawanna, is that the average wage (adjusted for inflation) for the new businesses at the Mahwah site are undoubtedly less than they were when Ford was there.

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Total wages are and taxes are undoubtedly higher, even with the only partial development of the site. Plus 4-5 years of construction wages as th ebuildings went up. A friend of mine works in the Sharp research area, lots of six figure salaries in that building! Probably offsets some of the five fig salaries at Sheraton.

Average wages per person are probably lower, but the Ford plant was at death's door for so long that the final few years didn't have a lot of employment for many years. the union leased out part of its nice office building, then the whole second floor, then they sold the building, maybe to a dental practice?

Unfortionatly this happens all to often in this state. NJ hardly manufactures a dman thign any more. We used to manufacvutre everythign fro mtrains, to cars hell at one time with the Pabst Brewery in Newark we even had a beer brewerd i nthis state. Now no thanks to greedy managment who makes the worst desicions to close plants and ship the jobs to china our economy state and nation wide have goen down the drain. The last time I visited NJ (last week) the unemployment offices there the lines outisde are gettign longer and longer. Our bread and butter has basically goen to Mexico, China, India,etc while we as Americans find nothing but jobs in retail, construction building big box retailers and Mc Mansions that usually caters to these blood sucking Nimbys! I would love to see them live in the 70s and 80s in places like Edison, Mahwah,Paterson even Fairfield and Parsippany when we had real jobs keeping this state and all her people going.

Our founding fathers would roll in their graves if they find that all our industry even in the white collar and tech sector has been exported overseas and 98% of the goods sold in stores like Walmart, Target and even the ones in the mall are from overseas. Bad enough that the state of NJ alone has like 10 Wal Marts, Targets and Home Depots all within 15 miles of each other (and these damn Nimbys wonder where all this traffic is comming from. No not to or from the train station to use the NJT service to NYP/Hoboken that these fools oppose with extreme prejudice but the big box retailers that their sleazy local politicians and towns people with the village of the damned mentality are so hungry for.

Sadly polticians on both sides of the aisle are siding too much with big business and not keeping in touch with the people who really need their help. In this dy and age the only jobs that require a college degree that I see go up is a district Store manager of these big box retailers and a regestered nurse. The rest of the jobs ie retail and construction are a joke.

Expect their freight trains to slowly dissappear from a good amount of NJ as manufacturing goes south of the border or to the nations across the Pacific. Only time you'l lsee alot of activity in freights is places like Pt Elizabeth, Pt of Los Angeles and other palces that hanldes foreign goods but no where near enough as what it used to be when we had factories dotting the nation.

A sad day when if we have another building boom or war that all of our steel to build tanks, planes, trains, bridges and buildings will be steel from China or Mexico.

NJTRailfan wrote:Expect their freight trains to slowly dissappear from a good amount of NJ as manufacturing goes south of the border or to the nations across the Pacific. Only time you'l lsee alot of activity in freights is places like Pt Elizabeth, Pt of Los Angeles and other palces that hanldes foreign goods but no where near enough as what it used to be when we had factories dotting the nation.

A sad day when if we have another building boom or war that all of our steel to build tanks, planes, trains, bridges and buildings will be steel from China or Mexico.

I work for a "port" trucking firm and just today I was reading how LA/Long Beach keeps growing 20% - 30% over PROJECTIONS every year. China is also becomming our chief trade partner, They receive 25% of our exports too. In 50 years all the RR modlers will have is double stack COFC cars to modle. That's all that's going to be left!

[quote="NJTRailfan"]Unfortionatly this happens all to often in this state. NJ hardly manufactures a dman thign any more. We used to manufacvutre everythign fro mtrains, to cars hell at one time with the Pabst Brewery in Newark we even had a beer brewerd i nthis state. Now no thanks to greedy managment who makes the worst .............


Expect their freight trains to slowly dissappear from a good amount of NJ as manufacturing goes south of the border or to the nations across the Pacific. Only time you'l lsee alot of activity in freights is places like Pt Elizabeth, Pt of Los Angeles and other palces that hanldes foreign goods but no where near enough as what it used to be when we had factories dotting the nation.
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As industrial bases shift, these changes also shift with them. When my grandfather was 12 years old, he wiped the fireboxes of steam engines for five cents an hour, just like kids in China do today. In 60 years, that guy's grandchild will be making big bucks, just like my grandfather's nine grandchildren in 3 families are.

The fundamental problem is NJ, NY, CT are difficult places to run basic industry anymore. Trucking, laws, neighbors, wage rates, noise, crime. A look at any siding will show you that. A few that come to mind are the

--Erie West Orange branch, once shoulder to shoulder with manufacturers

--DLW Montclair electric, lined with factories thru Newark, Bloomf

--DLW Boonton Line at Delawanna-Passaic-Clifton. Once four tracks with sidings on both sidings, three jobs asigned for at least two shifts

--Pennsy NEC, look at the abandoned sidings on both sides. Back then PRR run hundreds of trains daily, interleaved switchers, and did it all with armstrong levers and morse code.

Who knows, maybe 50 years from now big Chinese corporations will move their manufacturing facilities to the U.S. to take advantage of the low wages here.

Right now, suppose we had a dispute with China. They make more and more of the equipment and consumer goods we need. Our industrial base keeps eroding because we can't compete with China and other Asian countries, even when it comes to precision or high-tech machinery. They pay low wages and have hardly any environmental safeguards or decent working conditions, but they make good stuff.
If a dispute came to a war, how long would we be able to last without these imports? What would our soldiers even wear, without cheap Asian uniforms? Maybe the US could develop an industrial base again, but it would take years. Meanwhile we would have no leverage. We wouldn't even have a credible nuclear deterrent, because we couldn't afford to disrupt Asian production. While we're hoping that our kids will be able to find some kind of decent jobs, we can enjoy the stack trains full of Asian imports rolling east from California ports. While Asia builds factories, we can't even find the resources to dig a 2 track tunnel between New Jersey and New York.
OK, end of rant.

Some folks would use that argument as a reason for peaceful workout of disputes, rather than bombing everything in sight. There's much to be said for not bombing everyone with whom you disagree.

The Chinese have as much to lose (export markets, technology imports, jobs for a billion unemployed, etc) as we have to lose (cheap clothing, cheap TVs and stereos, car parts and computers) in a war. Not to mention they hold several hundred billion dollars of T-bonds which would lose value if the US slipped substantially.

besides, China is one of the few places in the world where hundreds of mainline steam engines operate every day...