From U.S. REP. MARCY KAPTUR
Yesterday (Aug. 31, 2016) Dana Corporation broke ground for an $70 million, 200,000 square foot expansion to triple the size of its new facility in Toledo and create 300 new jobs.
It’s a great story, about a storied American company with long local roots. Dana will make axles for the new version of a great American brand, the Jeep Wrangler, on the site of the old Jeep and Willys Overland plant, restoring it from brownfield status.
How this came to be is a story about the proper role of government, and how a local community, its leaders and citizens, and private business can join together and work collaboratively for mutual benefit.
It wasn’t that long ago when the American auto industry was flat on its back, in bankruptcy, with serious doubts about its very survival.
There were some who wanted to give up on the American auto industry and its two million workers. They chose the easy path, turned their backs, choosing ideological purity over pragmatism. They voted against providing a funding bridge that was necessary to retool and rebuild the American automobile industry, the backbone of the American economy – and our region’s economy.
But the rest of us weren’t going to concede our future. We weren’t going to simply give up and foreclose on it. We organized; we planned and made our best case; we fought; we won.
Thanks to our efforts, the American auto industry is back, better than ever.
I am proud of my role as a leader in the fight on behalf of Toledo’s economy — its auto workers, the auto manufacturers, and its suppliers, like Dana, which has supplied Jeep Wranglers with axles since before World War II.
I am honored to have secured the first federal funding necessary to purchase the property and then to arrange funding for the clean-up of the 110 acres of the Overland Park brownfield site. With the Port Authority’s leadership we transitioned the property to a clean, workable manufacturing site.
Were it not for securing those federal funds we would not be celebrating Dana’s expansion, nor would there be the future prospects of 300 new quality good-paying jobs for Toledo.
America never succeeded by thinking small. America never thrived by giving up.
America succeeds when it dreams big dreams, when it competes to win. When we are allowed to compete fairly, we win.
