Once-mighty mill is scrapped Trenton's McLouth is being carved into chunks and carted away October 21, 2004
BY JOEL THURTELL FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER Jason Workman is what the scrap metal industry calls a burner. Every day, the 25-year-old from Carleton, Mich., picks his way through rubble in one of the idle steel-finishing barns where 6,000 people once worked for McLouth Steel ProductsCo. in Trenton. It's dark in the old mill, but the flame of his cutting torch gives him all the light he needs to carve big pieces of the mill into chunks of steel small enough to truck away. Jason Workman is literally turning the rust belt into scrap metal. At $405 a ton -- up from $180 a ton a year ago -- the mill is worth more as junk than it would be as a steel producer, says Trenton Mayor Gerald Brown. But for Michael Wilkinson, the plant's owner, the thought that he's ripping apart a plant that once gave jobs to 6,000 area workers doesn't please him. He'd rather be processing steel, says the 66-year-old native Englander. Sometimes, says Wilkinson, it feels "like I'm the pallbearer at my own financial funeral." But Wilkinson says it doesn't make economic sense to produce steel from scratch by shipping in ore, limestone and coke, and making iron and steel at Trenton. Other mills are more efficient and would force the plant, once again, into bankruptcy, Wilkinson said. Making steel at the Trenton mill isn't possible now anyway, whatever the economic realities. Last April, Wilkinson razed the plant's two tall blast furnaces. For a time after he bought the mill at a bankruptcy auction in 1996, Wilkinson was finishing steel he bought from other mills. But 15 months ago, Wilkinson idled the old McLouth cold rolling mill in Gibraltar. Wilkinson says he has an idea for how his two companies -- now named DSC Ltd. for the Trenton plant and DCR in Gibraltar -- could make money again as plants for finishing steel. But he refuses to discuss it for the record. Instead, he directs a reporter to talk to Harry Lester, director of District 2 of the United Steel Workers of America. It is an odd tip, since a call to Lester, 74, ignites a fusillade of abuse about Wilkinson's handling of the former McLouth plant. "Every time I drive by there, I get sick," said Lester, who started his steel career at McLouth in 1954 as a railroad engineer. "They're selling the thing for scrap," said Lester. "That mill was one of the most modern mills in the U.S." Lester knows the mill well, because from 1988 until 1996, his union oversaw its management as an employee-owned operation. "That's the biggest line of B.S. I've ever heard," said Lester of Wilkinson's claims that it would be uneconomical to produce steel at McLouth. "They had two blast furnaces, and we put $15 million into one of them just before McLouth declared bankruptcy. This guy who bought it had one thing in mind -- scrap it out. He waited for the scrap price to get right." In the 1950s, McLouth Steel was the most modern steel producer in the country. Encouraged by contracts with General Motors, company founder Don McLouth began shifting his steel production operation from Detroit to Trenton in the late 1940s. In 1953, the first of two blast furnaces was finished. In its heyday, McLouth employed some 6,000 workers and was ranked seventh among U.S. steel producers. But in 1954, McLouth died at age 52. The company went on, but it didn't keep its technological edge. Fuel crises and inflation in the 1970s hurt McLouth. In 1981, the company declared bankruptcy for the first time, according to company records. Following McLouth's second bankruptcy, the new owner, Wilkinson, promised to repay creditors from profits he'd make on the plant, said former Trenton Mayor Patricia Hartig. But his plan to make pig iron didn't materialize, Hartig said. Other plans have fallen apart, too, Lester said. Wilkinson is aware of the criticism but says the steel business is uncompromising. "It is a very, very difficult business," Wilkinson said. "If you don't know what your selling price and costs and volume are going to be -- if you miss even one of those -- in any business, you're bankrupt." Hartig says she thinks Wilkinson bought the plant for much less than the reported $32 million, because the price was to be paid from profits that never came to fruition. But Hartig said she doesn't care about that. What she wants for the Downriver community is to have the old McLouth plant's mile of Detroit River shoreline turned into a complex of hotels, restaurants, boat docks and a public boat access that would capitalize on the large-scale boating and the walleye fishery that already are there. Hartig's vision included the former McLouth property on the north end of the mill that trucking magnate and Ambassador Bridge owner Manuel (Matty) Moroun bought from Wilkinson. Moroun and Wilkinson own a huge chunk of waterfront. But Hartig contends it would make more money for them as a hotel and recreation operation than as a steel and trucking center. That dream was put on hold when city officials declined to buy Wilkinson's land, allowing it to go to Moroun, said Hartig. "We didn't have enough votes on council to pull it off," said Mayor Brown, who backed the idea. Brown, who calls himself "an eternal optimist," said he's convinced the old McLouth riverfront can be redeveloped for tourism and green space. "If you get the right mixture of people together with the wherewithal to spend that kind of cash," Brown said, "they could come in and buy the whole thing." Unlike Lester, the former and current mayors aren't looking to replace McLouth with more steel production. "I'm really glad they're tearing down the old buildings," Hartig said. "That's what we're looking for." But Michael Wilkinson hasn't given up. He's talking to steel producers, and "over the next three months, we'll get a very clear idea whether there will be steel operations, or will not be steel operations in Trenton," he said. For Jason Workman, cutting up the old mill beats putting siding on houses, his previous job. But he's ambivalent. "Since I was little," Workman said, "I've known family that worked here. Now I'm taking it apart piece by piece." Contact JOEL THURTELL at 248-351-3296 or [EMAIL PROTECTED]
