GREELEY, Colo.—Four decades have passed since Kodak chose a small northern Colorado town and called it home.
The international company put Windsor on the map. Kodak provided high-paying jobs, hope and security not only to Windsor residents, but to people who commuted from other towns and cities to work at the plant.
The parking lots off Eastman Park Drive that used to be filled now sit empty. Weeds grow out of the cracks in the cement, and the buildings could use a good power wash. Building C11, which was the main entrance to the plant’s administrative offices, holds no more meetings or employees. The parking spaces leading up to C11 were always full when Kodak was king, but every single space is empty now.
Bob Frank remembers the excitement and buzz that surrounded Windsor when Kodak employed more than 3,500 people.
With four of Kodak’s main buildings facing a major demolition project totaling more than 1 million square feet of space, Frank, a former Kodak employee, admits to being kind of depressed about what’s left.
“It’s kind of a shame to see what’s going on there,” Frank said. “It depresses me, I can tell you that. We were in the business of constructing buildings, not demolishing buildings.”
Former Windsor Mayor Ed Starck said he drove out to Kodak a couple of weeks ago and said the old administration building resembles a ghost town.
“I never worked at Kodak, but it’s still disheartening to see that,” he said. “Demolition is interesting. When they demolished the addition in front of the Park building, it was exciting to see the old building re-emerge. This demolition is going to be a little tougher to watch.”
Frank, 64, moved from Rochester, N.Y., to Windsor almost 40 years ago to work for Kodak Colorado Division. He arrived in Windsor in March 1971 as a project coordinator.
Frank worked at Kodak for 34 years and still lives in Windsor. He said Kodak’s first product out of building C13, one of the four buildings that will be demolished, was in late 1971. Kodak started construction in Windsor in 1969.
“I moved from building to building as they constructed one after another,” Frank said. “Back then, Kodak had an engineering division, they had a facilities division, a utilities division and it was all under one umbrella. They did it all. They didn’t have to rely on anybody.
“Management in the late ’80s and early ’90s was so focused on fighting with Fujifilm thinking that was their problem, and it wasn’t at all,” Frank said. “They just missed the fact that they hadn’t kept up with technology. Digital equipment just took over the whole business.”
Starck, 67, a Windsor native, remembers being in college when Kodak announced it was coming to Windsor.
“It was a great opportunity for a lot of people to get really good jobs,” said Starck, who was Windsor’s mayor from 2004-08. “I always enjoyed seeing them open their doors. Little did I ever imagine that I would see them nearly close their doors.”
Kodak came to Windsor at just the right time. Windsor was in dire need of a shot in the arm after several of its industries went under.Starck recalls how Windsor was “in the doldrums” before Kodak moved in.
“I got home in July of 1964, and it was really kind of a black cloud hanging over Windsor,” he said. “I remember when Kodak announced that they were going to be building in Windsor, and it was like, ‘Wow.’ The business people downtown were re-energized and did a lot of renovations to the downtown at that time. Just that one company really revitalized the energy in Windsor.”
Starck said that Kodak not only brought good jobs to the area, but he said the plant also helped out young women.
“In the past, I think sometimes women were given jobs that weren’t maybe quite as meaningful or certainly weren’t paid as well, but when Kodak came I think it had an effect on that,” Starck said.
Leonard Wiest, the former city manager in Greeley, said Kodak made an impact on people outside of Windsor, too. He was Greeley’s finance director in the early 1970s and recalls the company had a big water contract with the city of Greeley.
“Even though it was considered Windsor, a lot of Greeley residents worked there,” said Wiest, currently the chief operating officer for Water Valley Land Co. in Windsor. “There was some talk when enterprise zones were created in the ’80s or ’90s and Kodak wanted to do an expansion or something, Greeley was part of the enterprise zone and Windsor wasn’t. If Greeley could annex it, they could get some tax breaks, but that was after the fact and 20 years into when they were there. Obviously, that didn’t happen.”
Windsor Mayor John Vazquez said it’s sad to see what has happened to Kodak, but he added that Windsor’s fortunate to have other major industries move into town.
“As sad as it is to see Kodak consolidate back to Rochester, we’ve also been very fortunate to be diversified,” he said. “We’ve seen more medical and professionals. We’ve seen more manufacturing come in with Vestas and Hexcel and O-I. For nearly 30 years Windsor was a Kodak town. When Kodak once employed 2,000 to 3,000 people, if this had happened, it would have had a significant impact to everybody from the employees, to assessed values, the school district, the town budget and property tax revenues.”
For those like Frank who spent decades working at Kodak, seeing empty space where the buildings once stood just won’t look right.
“It’s already sad just to see it out there,” Frank said.
