General Motors' fight for survival is being watched closely in Kansas City, Kansas. The carmaker's Fairfax Assembly Plant pays millions in property taxes and, along with KU Med Center, is one of the city's largest employers.
Fairfax survived a round of plant closures announced in June. The factory is relatively new and produces the popular Chevy Malibu. Fairfax workers are also building the new Buick LaCrosse luxury sedan.
Cindy Cash, the president and CEO of the Kansas City, Kansas, Chamber of Commerce, was pleased to learn that Fairfax would endure. She was also sad for her hometown. Cash grew up in Garden City, Michigan, a suburb 17 miles west of downtown Detroit.
"It was very hard for me when I read the list of 14 that were going to close," she says. Seven plants on the list are in Michigan. "And all of them were within a community I had either lived, worked or lived very near to."
Though she used to drive a Camaro and lived for a time in Flint, Cash does not bleed engine oil. None of her immediately family worked for the automakers. Cash went into property management. She arrived in KCK in 1988 as the general manager of Indian Springs Marketplace.
Cash recently came across a book she had read years ago. The book described the auto industry in its infancy. Cash says it is interesting to read how Henry Ford, GM founder Billy Durant and other entrepreneurs got into car building. Durant was a carriage maker. "Every product, either we lose interest in it as consumers or something new comes along," she says.
Cash was confident that GM's bankruptcy wouldn't mean the end of Fairfax. She credits labor and management for the partnership that has made the Malibu a success. "I think as the company redevelops itself, I think we're in as good a position -- if not better -- than most other communities," she says.
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