10 years later: Community rebuilds after Maytag closure
Maytag was an economic driving force in Newton as a source for jobs, community grants and visible pride on locally produced products.
[VIDEO:10 years later: Community rebuilds after Maytag closure]
The city of Newton has weathered losing the plant since it closed May 10, 2006.
“The high-level paying jobs are not there as they were with Maytag,” said Chaz Allen, former mayor of Newton.
Memories of a one-plant town hang inside Uncle Nancy’s Coffee House.
“We lost our orchestra,” said Susan Hawk, a retired schoolteacher. “The school system went to a 3A instead of a 4A. Children would talk about parents looking for jobs, not knowing where they were going to be moving or if they were going to be moving.”
Whirlpool's decision to cut costs by shutting down an Iowa institution killed more than 1,700 jobs – nearly 5 percent of Jasper County’s population.
“Whirlpool can come take the name, but we still have the people,” Allen said. “The quality is in the people.”
Allen says the week the plant closed was the toughest week in his eight-year tenure as mayor.
“Our job was to react and recover from this and do the best we can and bring in the jobs,” he said.
Fourteen companies relocated to the Newton area since Maytag left.
“The people of this county and this community are resilient,” Allen said.
County officials just reported a 14-year low for unemployment, dipping to 3 percent in 2015.
“We’re better than a lot of places in the country, and we’re way down from where we were in 2008 and 2009,” Allen said.
The data is evident just by walking the town square, where there are fewer empty storefronts.
It’s a sign the closure was a setback -- not a death sentence.
“Very slowly rebuilding, and that’s a good thing,” Hawk said.
TPI Composites provided an economic boost to the community, moving in one year after Maytag's closure.
The manufacturing company has been a source of about 950 jobs in Jasper County.