Published: November 22, 2008 11:25 pm         

‘We’re just not sure what to expect’

TOPEKA — The question isn’t whether recent job layoffs will affect Topeka. It’s a matter of how much, for how long and when or if the situation will improve.

“All the manufacturers in town seem to be slowing down, and I think we’re probably really going to feel it through the winter months — January, February, into March,” said Lyn Stutzman, owner of Topeka’s Ace Hardware.

“We’re all in kind of a wait-and-see situation with gas prices coming down, whether that’s going to boost the RV industry back up somewhat here,” Stutzman added. “I think it’s going to take some time either way. We’re not going to see it jump back up to where it was right away.”

“There’s no place to go,” he said of local workers who’ve lost their jobs. “You lose your job now, you’ve got no place to go to apply.

“Frankly, I think it’s going to have an effect like we haven’t seen. We’re just not sure what to expect.”

Stutzman said it seemed like Starcraft had a loyal workforce and was doing OK.

“They always had work,” he said. “This was kind of a real blindside to everybody.”

Stutzman said that as far as his store’s business goes, the biggest thing he’s noticed is people are buying more necessities and fewer luxuries.

“So we’re scaling back on the fluff, the things that people would normally buy that they don’t really need, because they’re just not buying that stuff like they were,” Stutzman said. “We haven’t so much seen a real drop in sales. It’s just that we’ve seen an adjustment in how they’re buying.”

Topeka resident Richard Parker feels it is going to take a while for the economy to rebound.

“It’s been slow ever since the summer,” said Parker, who along with his wife owns Jr.’s Pizza. “We’ve noticed it here, even, at our business.”

“There’s been so many people here in town who’ve already been laid off,” he said. “Every place is laying off. Everything’s really slow right now.”

According to Parker, the economic downtown has affected everybody.

“There’s a lot of people that come in here to order food, and they say they’ve been laid off,” he said. “They’re not going to have Christmas or anything this year. They’ve told their kids there isn’t going to be anything this year.”

“We’ve got to hit rock bottom before long,” Parker added. “It’s got to turn around. It can’t get much worse than it is now. Hopefully it won’t last long.”

Harold Weppler, who lives east of town, said the closures will have an economic impact because people have given up farming and gone into manufacturing in recent years.

He also believes the economic downturn will impact the area for a while.

JoNel Kurtz of the Topeka Library that there have been so many layoffs already that there just aren’t other jobs out there right now.

“We have lots of people who come into to file unemployment here, and a lot of them are Amish,” Kurtz said. “Other than factory work or a small business that they can run themselves, they kind of have limited options.”

“You kind of look around,” she added, “and there aren’t a lot of jobs left in Topeka.”