KCK booster offers unique perspective on GM’s woes

General Motors’ fight for survival is being watched closely in Kansas City, Kansas. The carmaker’s Fairfax Assembly Plant pays millions in property taxes and, along with KU Med Center, is one of the city’s largest employers.

Fairfax survived a round of plant closures announced in June. The factory is relatively new and produces the popular Chevy Malibu. Fairfax workers are also building the new Buick LaCrosse luxury sedan.

Cindy Cash, the president and CEO of the Kansas City, Kansas, Chamber of Commerce, was pleased to learn that Fairfax would endure. She was also sad for her hometown. Cash grew up in Garden City, Michigan, a suburb 17 miles west of downtown Detroit.

“It was very hard for me when I read the list of 14 that were going to close,” she says. Seven plants on the list are in Michigan. “And all of them were within a community I had either lived, worked or lived very near to.”