A white elephant tramples Harvard; Burb's tough sell: closed Motorola plant.(News)(cell phone manufacturing and distribution plant shut down)

Crain's Chicago Business, May, 2003

Byline: BOB TITA The silence these days at Motorola Inc.'s Harvard plant is broken only by mowers, commandeered by landscapers who continue to cut the lawns surrounding acres of empty parking lots and vacant gray buildings with green glass windows. When it opened five years ago, the $100-million cell phone manufacturing and distribution plant was touted as one of the largest business developments ever attracted to the state.

But instead of being Illinois' bridge to the prosperous tech-sector economy, the plant became a high-profile casualty of the industry's meltdown. Since shutting down for good April 1, the 1.5-million-square-foot plant is now a white elephant up for sale. In the wake of the closing, Harvard and McHenry County officials cling to the...

Read the rest of this article with a Free Trial at HighBeam Research.

Premium Content Partnership | HighBeam Research provides an in-depth online archive library of reference works.