Why Twitter's CEO is celebrating this 'phenomenally brave' Iowa town

Kevin Hardy | The Des Moines Register

WEBSTER CITY, Ia. — Sitting in the shade outside a local coffee shop in a black T-shirt and skinny black jeans, San Francisco tech executive Jack Dorsey gushed Thursday over the economic resilience of this small Iowa community.

Dorsey, a co-founder and CEO of social media giant Twitter, called Webster City residents "phenomenally brave" for the way they responded to the 2011 closure of the city's largest employer, the Electrolux washer and dryer factory.

"The transformation this town created for itself is a special story," he told reporters.

Dorsey, who is also the founder and CEO of payment processor Square, Inc. was in town for the premiere of a mini-documentary celebrating Webster City's progress since the plant's closure.

Square, which went public in 2015 with a valuation of $2.9 billion, is known for its white square-shaped credit and debit card terminals at small shops and restaurants. The company was founded after Dorsey's counterpart Jim McKelvey grew frustrated over losing customers for his glass faucets because he couldn't accept credit cards, the CEO said.

Dorsey likened Square's growth to the trajectory of Webster City's post-Electrolux era.

"Any type of loss is an opportunity to create something new," Dorsey said. "Square was born that way: Jim lost a sale. We asked the question why, and the company is the answer to that question."

The film is the second in Square's ongoing "For Every Dream" series: the first 9-minute film documented how a Syrian refugee in Knoxville, Tenn., found his version of the American Dream by opening his own falafel shop.

In Webster City on Thursday, hundreds packed a downtown block party full of food stands and children's games to celebrate the film's premiere.

Called "Made in Iowa," the film depicts this city of about 8,000 as a gritty comeback kid. In the intro, locals grimly describe the washer and dryer factory's closure.

Lives were turned upside down. Families lost homes and cars. Shops closed their doors.

But after some new industry moved in, current business owners doubled down and community members pitched in on a marquee redevelopment of the downtown movie theater, the film paints an uplifting picture of the community.

"When the factory left people started questioning what's important and what matters and what do I want to do. And those are the moments of transformation," Dorsey said. "The fact that the whole town did it at once is pretty rare and stunning."

A 'vacuum of residents and businesses'

In October 2009, Electrolux announced plans to move 850 jobs at its washer and dryer factory to Juarez, Mexico.

The Webster City plant, which got its start as Beam Manufacturing in the late 1930s, employed as many as 2,300 people at its peak.

Around the time of the closure, an Iowa State University study found that manufacturing jobs were the highest paying in the region. Factory workers in Hamilton, Webster, Wright and Humboldt counties earned an average of $62,000 annually in salary and benefits, according to Des Moines Register archives.

The final 500 workers walked out of the factory for the last time in March 2011. The plant's closure rippled through in the way of job losses at local suppliers, said Webster City Manager Daniel Ortiz-Hernandez.

Some people left with the plant, but the population has only dropped slightly, thanks in part to continued growth in the immigrant population, he said. Census estimates put the city's 2015 population at 7,756, down about 5 percent from the 2000 population of 8,176.

Since Electrolux closed, several companies have expanded or opened shop in and around the city. Vero Blue has hired some 40 workers since announcing plans in 2014 to open indoor fish farms in and around the city, Ortiz-Hernandez said.

And existing food manufacturers such as Mary Ann's Specialty Foods and Webster City Custom Meats will soon be joined by the massive Prestage pork plant in nearby Eagle Grove, which will employ nearly 1,000.

"Now we are much more diversified," the city manager said. "If one were to leave, we would definitely have a much easier time trying to adjust to that."

While a few downtown storefronts sit empty, the flag-lined Second Street shows many signs of life: the narrow strip is home to antique shops, a pet store, a jeweler, a sporting goods store, a hardware store and a variety of places to eat and drink.

"I think there was this perception outside Webster City that there would be this mass vacuum of residents and businesses. And it was quite the opposite," Ortiz-Hernandez said. "There was this feeling from residents that they made Webster City their home, and they were going to stick with it."

'Don’t count us out yet"

Still, it's hard to ignore the effects of the Electrolux departure.

Between 2006 and 2016, Hamilton County lost more than a quarter of all its jobs, including 76 percent of its manufacturing jobs base, according to Iowa Workforce Development data.

In 2006, 3,100 people worked in plants and factories in the county. In 2016, that number had dropped to 745.

After six years of decline, the county slowly started to add jobs over the last three years, particularly in education and health services and finance, insurance and real estate.

Even manufacturing jobs began ticking back up last year, state data show.

"I really think our community lived under the threat of that place closing for a long time. And for some it was honestly a relief when they finally announced they were going to go," said Jake Pulis, who owns P&P Electric in Webster City. "And now on the other side of it, we've learned we can define ourselves as other than a company town."

But that doesn't mean the Electrolux closure wasn't painful.

"I think people honestly thought the sky was falling in the beginning," Pulis said. "But it wasn’t as big an impact as it might have appeared."

Many community members point to the 2013 closure of the downtown movie theater as a turning point. People were sick of losing local shops and amenities, Pulis said, and they fought to purchase, refurbish and reopen the Webster Theater.

Pulis said community members easily raised a quarter of a million dollars in a matter of weeks to reopen the theater.

Their determination, he said, helped save the town from the fate of so many other rural communities that have suffered from the negative consequences of foreign trade and population decline.

"This is iconic for a lot of rural America," Pulis said. "But don’t count us out yet. We’re still a community."

'Webster City's going to be alright'

Early on in "Made in Iowa," the film tours the site of the now-demolished Electrolux factory.

Jeffrey Pingel, a 19-year veteran of the plant, points to the spot where employees spent lunch breaks on picnic tables. Not far from there was the main entrance and the station where workers clocked in and out of each shift.

"It's all gone," he said. "I can visualize it still."

The film spends most of its 12 minutes documenting the effort to reopen the Webster Theater, which 48-year-old Pingel helped lead. Volunteers secured nonprofit status to ensure the theater remained affordable and open, he said.

They recruited donations to buy new projection equipment, seats and other capital improvements (more are still needed, he said). It reopened in September 2014.

"We pulled it off," he said.

The film points to the 236-seat, single screen theater as a beacon for a community that refused to give up, a catalyst for others in town to soldier on.

So it was fitting that the documentary premiered inside the now-spiffy theater, which touts a massive, crystal-clear screen and reclining seats.

Pingel, who now works for Black Hills Energy, said his family never considered leaving Webster City. You have to live somewhere, he said.

And, standing just down the street from the theater's shiny marquee, he says things in his hometown are looking up.

"Life's OK," he said. "We're going to be alright. Webster City's going to be alright."