Part I–An Era Comes to an End
Once upon a time in the early 1950s, Westinghouse Electric decided to put a vacuum tube manufacturing plant on the outskirts of Bath. By the early 1980s, Philips North America decided to buy the facility–and the concentration had long ago moved from tubes to specialty lighting applications.
When they ABANDONED the site and its dedicated core of local workers several years ago–and then refused reasonable offers for others to assume the property–now we learn that the entire plant is being demolished. As a matter of fact, it is underway now with interior salvage and demolition.
What a sad end. New industry wants to attach itself to the state & local economic development honey-pots that are set aside–such as grants for construction, infrastructure, and utility & tax abatements. NEW is the key–as it’s more cost-effective for a concern to build to their own specs than transform an existing design to their purposes. One cannot blame them in their learned corporate religion of delivering maximum benefit to investors–while busily discarding the interests of the local economy and community–as this is one more of the malignant functions of American Capitalism. This path is writ large in all of the abandoned manufacturing scattered across the United States. A continuing casualty of Reaganism and its integral globalism to evade regulation.
Even sadder is the propensity of such companies that do dip into the honey-pots–and to later go somewhere else as offshore (read outside of the US) or do the same thing in another community once the contractual obligations for receiving the monies expire. Not everyone is Corning Corporation…
Now we will be left with an overpriced, empty lot that will not likely be of any great interest to a new, relocating company. Who knows? But we, and especially those who worked there for decades will no longer be tortured by the decaying hulk of the former plant today.
Part II–Amazon Survives
In an amazing display of bureaucratic obstacles, the proposed Amazon distribution center is surviving–and appears long past the need for resuscitation. As the proposed property in the IDA Industrial Park (a sea of emptiness & abandonment) is located outside of the village limits, anything along roads and etcetera requires the official hokey-dokey of the Bath Town Board. When issues arose surrounding the traffic situation at the entrance between Simmons-Rockwell to the former Mercury Aircraft plant–things stalled. Thankfully, the resolution boiled down to a settlement between the NYS Department of Transportation and Amazon. Jim Johnson of Steuben County IDA helped to mediate the final solution. That’s great, considering the recent obstruction that chased off a viable tenant assuming the former CVS store on Liberty Street…
Requests For Bids went out last month for the turn lane work, and it appears that we are now at the contract stage. Good for us! Let’s hope that this employment and economic development opportunity keeps on schedule for opening this year–and gives jobs and cash flow by the holidays.
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