Harry Eadon looks back on 20-year career in economic development
DOVER — One of the biggest challenges Harry Eadon ever faced in promoting economic development locally was to find someone willing to buy the old Alsco-Anaconda plant in Gnadenhutten.
Much of the plant had been torn down, but the portion that remained was in rough shape. Trees were growing inside the building and pieces of the roof were falling in.
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Despite that, Eadon, executive director of what was then known as the Tuscarawas County Port Authority, showed the plant to the acting president and chairman of the board of Wisconsin-based Plymouth Foam. They wore hardhats because of the dangers from the roof.
Eadon recalled that the acting president did not like what he saw.
The chairman of the board, however, had a different view.
“The fellow that was chairman of the board turned around, and he said, you know what, I can see it. I can see a manufacturing plant here,” Eadon recalled. “I said, I can too. I said, I think we fix the roof, we get rid of the trees that are growing inside the building, we put in new HVAC, new electric feed.
“The chairman asked if we were willing to lease it to them, and I said, absolutely. We would renovate it.”
The port authority borrowed money from the county commissioners and the state and made about $2.4 million in renovations to the dilapidated factory building.
Within two years, Plymouth Foam bought the building for $3.2 million.
When the port authority bought the plant in 2005, no one was working there. Now it is occupied by Plymouth Foam and Progressive Foam Technologies, and about 150 people are working there.
Eadon, who will be retiring on March 28 from what is now known as the Tuscarawas Economic Development Corp., sat down recently with The T-R to look back on his 20-year career with the agency.
How Harry Eadon got started
Eadon and his family first came to Tuscarawas County in 1994 when he got a job at the old Handy & Harmon plant in Dover (now Meteor Sealing Systems). When the plant closed, he had the opportunity to go to work for Handy & Harmon in Indiana, but his family wanted to stay in Dover. He found other work.
In 2002, he was offered the chance to become the first executive director of the Tuscarawas County Port Authority. The organization was given the task of developing a golf course/hotel/conference center near Dundee, but that project soon fell through.
The agency then shifted its focus to the old Reeves Mill in Dover, which closed in the 1990s.
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When Eadon took a tour of the facility, he recalled that only four people were employed there, four security guards. It was also home to lots of pigeons. The plant was owned by AK Steel, which was asking $4.8 million for the property.
“When we took a tour, I talked with the person that was in charge of real estate for AK Steel and I talked with him about the price. He said, well, you know what, just make us an offer,” Eadon said.
Eadon offered the man $1.4 million, and he agreed.
They closed on the deal on Dec. 31, 2002, and the port authority had a lease agreement by mid-January 2003 with Owens-Corning, which leased 252,500 square feet in the building for five years. The rent the company paid the port authority paid for all renovations at the plant, now known as the Reeves Mill Business Park.
Later, Deflecto moved in. When Owen-Corning moved out, Deflecto was in the process of expanding. It now leases almost 300,000 square feet of the building. Extreme Trailers occupies much of the rest of the building.
About 225 people now work at the Reeves Mill Business Park.
Bringing change to Gnadenhutten
Eadon next turned his attention to the old Alsco plant in Gnadenhutten.
The plant was built in 1948 and housed Alsco-Anaconda for about 50 years until the company closed in 1997. About 6.7 acres at the site was listed as a Super Fund site in 1986 by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The area was cleaned up and delisted in 2001.
When Eadon first visited the plant, it was owned by BP.
He toured the abandoned facility with the mayor of Gnadenhutten and a representative from BP.
“We talked about what we might be able to do to help them market it, and they said, we’re terrible at this. We buy property. We’re terrible at selling it. How about if we sell it to you?” Eadon recalled.
“I said, I have a dollar in my pocket. I could pay you a dollar for it. No, we’d probably have to have more than that. I said, how much more?”
BP wanted a couple of million dollars.
“I said it would be a hard sell. We went back and forth for five or six months. They finally came back to me and said, we liked what you did at the Reeves Mill. We think you would be the right partner to do something with. So they sold it to us for $1.”
Soon after, some executives from Plymouth Foam came from Wisconsin. They shared a facility with Progressive Foam in Beach City, but they needed a place of their own. Eadon took them to Newcomerstown, where one of their competitors, Pacemaker Plastics, was located.
He also took them to the Alsco plant, but they weren’t interested.
Two months later, Plymouth Foam bought Pacemaker Plastics. Pacemaker had two plants in Newcomerstown, but Plymouth officials knew they needed to be consolidated into one location. They were looking for 100,000 square feet of space, but none was available in Tuscarawas County.
In the winter of 2005, Plymouth executives called Eadon to set up another tour. But on their way to Ohio, their plane crashed, killing the two brothers who owned the company.
It was several months later when Eadon met with the acting president and chairman of the board.
“We looked around Newcomerstown,” he said. “There was nothing, nothing that big. And they didn’t want to build, because they didn’t have time to build. So I took them to Gnadenhutten.”
And the deal was made.
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Helping out with ODOT … and more
Eadon was also involved in redeveloping the old Ohio Department of Transportation property on W. High Avenue in New Philadelphia. With a $700,000 Clean Ohio grant, his agency was able to tear down the buildings and abate the asbestos. Buffalo Wild Wings and a car wash are now located there.
The economic development corporation is now working on redeveloping the old Howden Buffalo plant in New Philadelphia. The plant closed in June 2014, and in 2020 Howden donated it to the agency.
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Eadon and his successor, Marla Akridge, envision it as a mixed commercial and residential area.
He said three developers have already expressed interest in it.
Eadon is now looking forward to retirement.
He will be 69 in a couple of months. He and his wife, Lorrie, would like to spend more time with their three grandson and do some boating. Eadon said he will also have more time to umpire softball and referee football games, which he enjoys.
He credits God for his success in economic development.
“The things that we’ve done, some of them, almost seem accidentally as I look back on the last 20 years,” Eadon said. “They really do seem sort of accidentally, but it’s not. It’s all the Lord that’s been driving this and opening doors.”
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