Same Place, Different World

Voices (III): "This Town Wasn't Going to Shrivel and Die."

Palvena Pace: "When Fruit of the Loom announced that it was closing, we were inundated with companies wanting to hire people. A month after the first layoffs, we had a job fair. We had 50 employers at the high school, and 3,000 people showed up. But only 10 or 20 took jobs. The jobs were mostly from out of town, and nobody wanted to leave."

David Joe Perkins: "I've lived within a half-mile radius my whole life. That's how people here are. We aren't uneducated -- we just live where we were brought up. Our roots are here."

Kevin Sheilley, 28, head of economic development for Campbellsville and Taylor County, a group that he renamed "Team Taylor County": "There's never a good time to go through what this community went through with Fruit of the Loom. But if you have to, going through it in the middle of the biggest boom economy in the history of the world isn't bad. We have something that everybody -- old economy, new economy -- needs. That's people. "Consultants started calling, and we started answering questions about Taylor County, and sending the answers to anonymous fax machines, to P.O. boxes with no names. When companies are looking to locate a facility, it's a little like being in a James Bond movie. Companies rarely give their names. They don't want to get people's hopes up. So we also give a code name to every company that thinks of coming here."

Andy Westlund, 48, VP of global operations for Amazon.com, the company known as "Project Gift" to Team Taylor County: "We knew that we needed to build a regional distribution center. There are four cuts you use to decide. One, where are your customers? Two, where are the available buildings? At any one time, there are probably only 10 buildings in the country that are big enough for us. Once you know the region, you need to ask, What's the cost of operating there? And then you would have to find out about the work ethic."

Kevin Sheilley: "The people from Project Gift wanted to know about telecommunications infrastructure, about UPS service. They wanted to know how people would feel about another large company from outside coming in. They also wanted to know how people here would react to someone who was gay or lesbian. You have no choice but to be honest. I said, It's a very Bible Belt town. But at the same time, people aren't overly nosy. They may have very strong feelings, but ultimately the overwhelming sense of southern hospitality wins out, of being polite and courteous and welcoming."

Andy Westlund: "When we went to visit Campbellsville, there were four places in the running. It really wasn't even a coin toss: Campbellsville just won, by head and shoulders."

Kevin Sheilley: "Rumors got out. Every other phone call to the office was, Is it Toyota? Is it R.R. Donnelley? Is it Ford? I heard someone say it was Campbell Soup."

David Joe Perkins: "I heard the announcement on the radio -- Q104. This is a town where they broadcast obituaries and birthdays on the radio. I was in my truck when they announced that Amazon was coming. I knew they sold books. It was a chance to get into something I'd never done before."

Kevin Sheilley: "We held the announcement at the fine-arts center at Campbellsville University. I had to beg and plead with Amazon to hold it there. It seats 250. They didn't think anyone would show up. The place was full an hour before the scheduled announcement. We had to turn away hundreds of people. For the leadership in the community, it meant more than I can express -- it meant that this town wasn't going to shrivel and die. It wasn't the end of time."

Seeds of Renewal

From Silicon Valley to Wall Street, 1999 was a banner year for the U.S. economy. That year also turned out to be a good one for Sheilley, who worries about the lives of people on Main Street in Campbellsville. When he was hired in late 1998 -- as the first full-time economic-development person for Campbellsville and Taylor County -- his new bosses set clear performance standards for him. "The 10-year goal was to bring in 1,500 new jobs total," says Sheilley. "And we all knew that number was ambitious." So the 1,900 jobs that Taylor County landed last year is nothing short of phenomenal. They hardly replace what was lost, but the county's unemployment rate has dropped to 9%.

Amazon opened one of its huge distribution centers -- it has seven in the United States -- in the old Fruit of the Loom distribution center that former Mayor Miller surveyed the land for. Amazon expanded it, so that there are now 17 acres of space under a single roof, filled with a stupendous collection of books, CDs, DVDs, toys, garden equipment, electronics, and kitchenware. Amazon has more than 500 Campbellsville employees, all but a handful of them local, and the company is hiring steadily toward a goal of 1,000 workers for the next holiday season.