Sony's harsh blow.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Any plant closure that throws 277 people out of work comes as bad news - particularly now, when many of those workers will have a hard time finding jobs with comparable pay and benefits. But Sony's decision to close its Springfield plant is a doubly bitter blow.

Since it opened in 1995, Sony's compact disc manufacturing plant has been the central symbol of Springfield's successful economic diversification. A huge multinational company chose Springfield above all other locations in the world, paving the way for other high-technology companies to come to Lane County and helping the city outgrow its near-total dependence on the wood products industry.

The closure of the Springfield plant looks like a desperate cost-cutting move on the part of Sony Disc Manufacturing, a division of Sony Music Entertainment - the world's largest producer of pre-recorded compact discs. The recorded music industry has been bleeding because of people's ability to download their own music or record their own discs. At the same time, the CD format is losing ground to DVDs, the latest generation of optical disc storage technology.

The 335,000-square-foot Springfield plant, however, seemed reasonably well insulated against the turmoil in its industry. It was the newest of Sony Disc Manufacturing's 10 production facilities, including its four in North America. Sony purchased three times as much property as it needed in the Gateway area, suggesting that it might someday expand. The company maintained a high-profile corporate presence, supporting educational, cultural and charitable institutions in a manner that a here today, gone tomorrow company like hard-drive disc maker HMT Technologies never did.

But Sony put most of its DVD-making investments in its larger plant in Terre Haute, Ind. Sony chose to make DVD packages, but not the discs themselves, at the Springfield plant. A compact disc factory that reflected the state of the art when it opened eight years ago is effectively obsolete today.

Sony received about $8 million in tax incentives in exchange for agreeing to build its $50 million plant in Springfield. The direct payoff for those inducements had only recently begun to materialize, with the plant going on the property tax rolls and contributing $623,000 to local governments and schools. The indirect payoff has accrued from the beginning in the form of payrolls and jobs at ancillary businesses.

Local governments, of course, would have received nothing from Sony if the company had decided to build elsewhere in 1995. The tax incentives represent unrealized potential income, not an out-of-pocket cost. Still, there's a bargain implicit in tax abatements, and local governments should seek some way to protect themselves, perhaps through the forfeiture of funds held in escrow, in case the bargain isn't kept. A company's commitment to a community should extend beyond its period of special tax treatment.

By losing Sony, Springfield will soon gain a large, ready-to-go industrial site of a type that is hard to find in Oregon or anywhere along the Interstate 5 corridor. That's little consolation to the workers who will soon be looking for jobs in a market that has few to offer. But if Sony understood the value of the Gateway site, others can recognize it as well. Springfield and Lane County have endured darker days than these.