GOODFIELD - A few years ago, three shifts of Case New Holland employees looking for a beer after work on Fridays would crowd Village Tap in Deer Creek and keep it open almost 24 hours.

But there's no third shift at the Goodfield plant anymore, no need to open at 6 a.m. for the night owls. There's no need to cash payroll checks, or for a second bartender on Fridays. There are still retirement parties here, owner Diana Alvis said, but these days workers are leaving because their employer is shutting down.

The upcoming closure of the agriculture equipment manufacturing plant, two miles east on U.S. 150, has hurt business at the bar, said Alvis, who made the decision to sell it after her husband died last year, not because of CNH.

"I'm still doing OK, but it's not as lucrative as it once was," Alvis said.

The closure also comes at a critical time for Woodford County and the small village of Goodfield. CNH is the largest employer in Goodfield and the largest taxpayer into its local school district. As hundreds of jobs evaporate, the closure looms over area businesses, government and development efforts.

Finding a replacement will be difficult. Manufacturing jobs are declining throughout the country, and Woodford County will do all its own marketing after recently leaving the Peoria-based Economic Development Council for Central Illinois.

As the county tackles the task, one thing is clear:

"The effect it's going to have … is totally dependent on who goes in there next," said 68-year-old Bill Dietrich, who in his 20s founded the business that eventually became the CNH plant.

Manufacturing months of delay

CNH announced the closure Oct. 25, 2006, 23 days after Cargill said it would not reopen its Goodfield feed mill following a September fire, displacing 17 workers. CNH is shifting production to an underutilized plant in Canada, and of the 222 workers told they'd lose their jobs, just over 100 remain, spokesman Tom Witom said.

Originally scheduled to be closed by the end of this year, the final production of tillage and fertilizer equipment has delayed that until at least March 2008. County officials have heard it could be even longer. Witom said that the final production is because of market demand, while almost everyone else has heard the Saskatchewan plant is having trouble with its new workload.

Either way, the village will soon be left with an empty 233,000-square-foot facility on 78 acres.

Though many Peoria-area companies are growing, new manufacturing jobs in Woodford County are harder to come by. At the end of 2002, the county had 2,484 manufacturing jobs, nearly 29 percent of the private-sector work force. By the beginning of this year, that number had dropped to 2,178 jobs or 22.1 percent of the private-sector work force, according to state employment data. The service sector has picked up the slack, keeping the county's unemployment rate consistently low.

But the challenge of local jobs leaving the U.S. is here to stay, said Ben Brewster of the Peoria-based Workforce Network, which is helping those who have lost their CNH jobs.

"Market pressures and industry shifts are occurring on an international level, and the ripple effects are felt locally," he said.

How far will the county go?

And the ripples will be left for Woodford County to smooth after it severed ties with the EDC, saying the group wasn't giving the county enough bang for its $100,000 annual contribution.

But the county can employ various development tools depending on the type of business interested, said County Administrator Greg Jackson. While making it clear that it "would not pay someone to come into the county," he said it would consider sales tax rebates and aid from its revolving loan fund.

The county is planning to use a small part of the $100,000 on marketing various sites, Jackson said. The county also will try to market the CNH site via the Central Illinois Development Partnership's Web site and by working more closely with the Economic Development Council of the Bloomington-Normal Area, he said.

Jackson is already dropping names of companies he'd like to see move in, saying he's received some positive feedback from companies interested in the site to manufacture or stage wind turbines. Some, like Dietrich, think it'd be easy for two or more companies to divide the site, perhaps to access what many see as a growing logistics market between Peoria, Bloomington and the Interstate 39 corridor.

Other coffee-shop rumors see the delay and dream about CNH deciding to leave a smaller, "lean and mean" operation in town, Dietrich said.

But because it's a smaller county with limited staff, Jackson is now left to pursue many development efforts by himself. And the unclear departure date may slow things down.

The impact: Sooner or later?

That delay has muzzled the closure's immediate impact, though many say the collateral effect of not having hundreds of people drive through the area each day - stopping for gas or a meal - may one day hurt the most. The financial impact to places like the Village Tap is hard to quantify but still there, Jackson said.

The ultimate hit to the property tax base will depend on a variety of factors. Of more than $57,000 CNH paid in 2006 property taxes, according to Woodford County records, about $35,000 went to the Congerville-Eureka-Goodfield school district, the most of any single taxpayer, said Superintendent Randy Crump.

The assessment of one of the now-unoccupied Cargill parcels dropped by almost 25 percent after the fire, and the same could happen to CNH if left to rot. If that happens, other taxpayers would have to make up the difference, though the school district still may lose out on some of its revenue, Crump said.

Jackson also knows how it looks to companies considering other sites near Goodfield, which has more than 700 residents, if the former home of one of the county's largest employers is left unattended.

"Success begets success," he said. "If you see an area that has empty buildings and it looks almost blighted, there's a little bit less excitement about coming into that area."

There won't be a mass exodus from Goodfield, which is a "sleeping town" for many, as Busy Corner restaurant owner Randy Selvey puts it. Only a handful of CNH workers live here, and not everyone lives in Woodford County.

And Goodfield is carrying some development momentum with it into the closure. Two new business parks are looking for hotels, restaurants and construction companies, and the new Bridle Ridge Estates subdivision could double the population in the coming years. The county recently approved a loan to help Hoerr Construction, Peoria, and six jobs move into Goodfield, and Jackson said another company in the transportation sector is looking to do the same.

"Now it's up to us … to turn around and be proactive and respond to the hand we've been dealt, rather than complain about it and begrudge and point the finger," Jackson said. "This was a business decision. People make business decisions to leave Woodford County. But they also make business decisions to come into Woodford County."

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A Goodfield staple

A history lesson on how CNH Goodfield's agriculture equipment manufacturing predecessor, DMI, began:

1955: Bill Dietrich quits school and devotes time to his hog operation on the family farm north of Deer Creek.

1961: With hog prices high, Dietrich sells the hogs and starts making water tanks and farrowing crates and eventually some dry fertilizer blending equipment. DMI is created on the family farm in a 2,000-square-foot facility.

1963: DMI moves into a 9,000-square-foot facility in Goodfield, but 15 months later builds a 15,000-square-foot space east of town. After several expansions in 1974, it occupies 233,000 square feet, where CNH operates today.

1966: DMI experiences first major work force growth as the dual-wheel assembly for tractors and anhydrous ammonia application equipment becomes a big part of the business.

1972: A second big growth spurt occurs when a grain sale rush has profit-happy farmers ordering big. But an ag downturn in the early 1980s shrinks DMI's work force.

1995: Dietrich builds DSI, another Goodfield agriculture equipment manufacturing business. Its key product becomes another local innovation, the Dietrich Slurry Injector. DSI also makes equipment for coal mine land reclamation. He still runs DSI.

1998: Nearly 500 employees work for DMI, including sales staff based elsewhere, after

a period of rapid growth.

The now employee-owned company is sold to Case, which merges with New Holland in 1999.

SOURCES: Bill Dietrich, CNH

Working in Woodford

The number of people employed in manufacturing in Woodford County has dropped in recent years. The service-providing sector of the private workforce has made up the difference in that time:

Quarter/year… Pvt. workforce…Manufacturing…Percentage…Service-sector…Percentage…

1st quarter 2007…9,825…2,178…22.1…6,708…68.2

4th quarter 2006…10,179…2,230…21.9…6,943…68.2

4th quarter 2005…10,253…2,315…22.5…6,960…67.8

4th quarter 2004…10,200…2,340…22.9…6,896…67.6

4th quarter 2003…10,184…2,425…23.8…6,783…66.6

4th quarter 2002…8,590…2,484…28.9…5,213…60.6

Note: Totals do not equal 100 percent of private workforce because other goods-producing professions (agriculture, construction, etc.) are not included. SOURCE: Illinois Department of Employment Security

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Largest employers

The Case New Holland plant is one of the largest private employers in Woodford County. Here are some others:

Company…Business type…Full-time employees

Parsons Company Inc., Roanoke…Parts manufacturer…236

Case New Holland, Goodfield*…Agriculture equipment…222*

American Buildings Co., El Paso…Fabricated metal products…190

Versa Press, East Peoria…Publications manufacturer…80

Snyder Village Health Center, Metamora…Retirement/assisted living…145 full-time, 80-85 part-time

Hallmark Fixtures, Metamora…Greeting card company…140

Maple Lawn Health Center, Eureka…Retirement/nursing home…99

Eureka College, Eureka…Private college…90 full-time, 46 part-time

Apostolic Christian Home, Eureka…Nursing home…84

Apostolic Christian Home, Roanoke…Retirement home…73…

Heritage Manor, Minonk…Nursing home…60

Heritage Manor, El Paso…Nursing home…47

*Note: CNH figure, from October 2006, doesn't include engineering, sales or other staff now based in the area

SOURCES: Woodford County; the companies, as of mid-October