Sticker Shock
The scene: a van sloshing through rain-drenched south Orange County. Inside, 20 Lincoln-Mercury employees and spouses from Detroit listened as a real estate broker ticked off advantages to living in this sunshine state. Fogged-up windows blocked views of Coto de Caza where, they were told, $180,000 would buy them a 650-square-foot condo. Some of those in the van had bigger basements.
Distribution analyst Nancy Johnson: “It reminds me of Atlanta, but we had yards.”
Mike Studdard, head of Lincoln-Mercury’s relocation: “Those have yards.”
Johnson: “Did I blink and miss them?”
The bus filled with laughter. A guy joked about riding lawn mowers.
Studdard: “They’re yards, they’re just low-maintenance.”
By Monday--one month since Lincoln-Mercury announced that it was moving to Irvine--150 employees from the world capital of autos must decide. Will they chuck Motor City, home to the brick colonial, actual seasons and the womb of their industry, for the Southern California siren call of year-round golf, palm trees and Spanish-style stucco?
For this bold gamble to boost drooping sales by transplanting their headquarters from Detroit, most workers will take the plunge. Those who will not have largely cited personal reasons for staying behind at the Dearborn mother ship, where they will be given new jobs.
As with any move, choices come hard and change promises risk. Can they trade down on private space for the promise of career growth? What of elderly parents and young children? Will Orange County schools be diverse enough? Will their standard of living rise or fall? Will they be subjected to Mello-Roos fees, biblical floods and televised car chases?
“I’m all for moving if my husband can find a job,” said Sandy Connor, who coordinates field operation communications with Lincoln-Mercury’s 17 U.S. regional offices. Her spouse frets about California’s twin E’s, though. “He’s kind of concerned about earthquakes and now, of course, El Nino.”
Over four days with these employees--at their suburban Michigan homes and their high-rise office, and riding along on their California scouting trip--some answers emerged as they consider what may be the biggest change of their lives.
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In a move that made front-page headlines in both states, the Lincoln-Mercury division of Ford Motor Co. declared Jan. 22 that it would move its world headquarters for sales, marketing and product design to the Irvine Spectrum by year’s end.
Although most of the globe’s auto makers have design studios in Southern California, Ford is the first of the so-called Big Three American motor companies to break with Detroit.
All of the three dozen Lincoln-Mercury workers interviewed thought it smart for the company to relocate in California--the largest car- and truck-purchasing state in the union, with 26 million vehicles registered last year. The company hopes to jump-start lackluster sales of its Lincoln and Mercury brands by moving its creative hive to a trendsetter region known for dreaming up the large tail fin in the 1950s and in recent years, the minivan and sport-utility vehicle.
Lincoln-Mercury believes that inspiration will bloom in the land of car-as-personal-statement, where imports dominate the market and vehicles can endure for three generations rust-free.
Still, the car universe of Michigan was floored with news that Ford would move a division from the Detroit area. Lincoln-Mercury vehicles still will be built in Michigan, where most industry observers viewed the local impact as negligible. But the symbolism was disconcerting to some.
Such a shake-up is exactly what the company needs, said Jim Rogers, general marketing manager.
“We’re like the 45-year-old kid who still lives at home,” he said. “It’s time to move out on our own.”
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The newcomers acknowledge their stereotypes of Southern California--”Is everyone really gorgeous there and blond?” asked one. Most of the employees are professionals who drive at least half an hour from upper-middle-class enclaves such as Grosse Pointe or Birmingham to work downtown.
Their salaries range from the $30,000s to six figures.
They now rarely commute by public transportation. Taxes, they say, work out about the same. Heating bills will be lower, mortgages will surely be higher.
“I won’t have to wear a topcoat, and I can drive a convertible,” said John Csernotta, head of merchandising and promotions. He has lived in Cleveland, Chicago and Detroit.
“I figure our house will shrink and our cost of living will go up about 10%. But the company will help compensate for that.”
Lincoln-Mercury has flown two jets full of workers and spouses to Orange County the past two weekends. Even career Ford executives with eight or 10 relocations under their belt say this en masse transplant is rather remarkable.
“We figured the cost of the two trips out here at about $150,000,” said Pam Johnson, director of The Associates, the relocation firm overseeing the move. “It’s a lot of money.”
Two weeks after the announcement, 200 Detroit-based employees and their families were feted at a California orientation night at the Dearborn Ritz-Carlton. A member of the Irvine Chamber of Commerce was flown in. Concern No. 1 was: How will this move away from the Ford nucleus affect my career?
They would have exactly a month to find their answers.
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Three weeks and a day after the announcement, 45 employees and mates were aboard a jet bound for John Wayne Airport. A few had never seen the Pacific Ocean. A band playing “California, Here We Come” met them on the tarmac. In the morning, vans carried them through planned communities from Lake Forest to Mission Viejo and Dove Canyon. Each van had a real estate broker.
A lunch overlooking the Dana Point Harbor broke up the rainy caravan. Expressions of sticker shock and impressions good and bad were exchanged.
Brad and Lee Munn of Ann Arbor once lived in Northern California, where Lee was a teacher. They have twin 9-year-old daughters with learning disabilities, and have struggled in Michigan to get the right help.
“The schools here are more progressive for our needs,” Lee Munn said over lunch. “I think in the Midwest, people are more inclined to think what you can’t do. In California, people have said what can we do for you?”
The employees visited seven model homes, the smallest was 2,541 square feet for a starting price of $286,000. Though many nodded admiringly, more than a few looked stricken, muttering “this is mid-300s?” or “these houses all look alike!”
By midafternoon the rain-depressed Detroit employees returned to their hotel. They seemed cheered later by conversations with two Irvine Unified School District officials and Detroit transplant Linda Clinard of the UC Irvine education department.
“My wife, Linda, and I moved out here in 1988 from Detroit,” said John Clinard, Ford’s head of western region public affairs. “We got half the size of our lot in Michigan for twice the price, but I’ve been telling people: ‘My standard of living went down and my quality of living went up.’ ”
On Friday, another 40 or so Lincoln-Mercury employees arrived from Detroit for the second weekend orientation. Among them were Sandy Connor and her husband.
As avid golfers, they are excited about a warmer climate. And Connor has already got the freeway lexicon down. “I’ve already been told,” she said with a grin, “that its not the I-5, it’s ‘the 5.’ ”
Anne Doyle will be staying put. She has a nine-acre horse ranch in Auburn Hills and a son who just turned 6. As Lincoln-Mercury’s public affairs manager, she would be involved at a heady time for the company. She lived in Santa Monica during the ‘70s and worked in TV news, public relations and the women’s movement.
She could rent her ranch and stables. But she is a single mother whose son would suffer by being across the country from his father.
Joe Ghedotte, Lincoln-Mercury’s advanced products marketing manager, believes that the company move is exciting, but he can’t make it. Usually a Ford move is a promotion, Ghedotte said. This one would be lateral. The cost of living would probably increase. His wife, a regional manager for a hotel chain, would take a career hit. His son, 13, would move easily, but his daughter, 17, is another story. “She has real trouble with change,” he said.
Decisions must be reported to Lincoln-Mercury by Monday. Mary Williams made up her mind early. She is excited about moving.
As a single mother, custody visits will be about the same distance because her former husband lives in Texas. As owner of a roomy home in West Bloomfield, Mich., she hopes to at least buy a four-bedroom house in California. As an African American woman, she will want to find a neighborhood with excellent schools and diversity among classmates.
At first, her 8-year-old son cried at the possibility of moving. Williams, involved with advertising for Mercury and in charge of ethnic marketing, did not push; she let him consider the idea.
After he watched the Super Bowl set in sunny San Diego, he came around. “I let him think it was his idea,” Williams said. “You only raise a child once, and nothing comes before that but God. But I think it’s going to be good.”
