Man who tried to restart plant is bankrupt

Keith Obey collected investments of $16,000 each from 43 former Ford stamping employees in Maumee. Enlarge

The man who attempted to revive the former Ford Motor Co. stamping plant in Maumee and turn it into an auto parts factory partially owned by employee investors is bankrupt.

Keith Obey, 56, who now lives in Farmington, Mich., a northern suburb of Detroit, filed for Chapter 7 liquidation on Thursday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Detroit, providing preliminary information that lists debts somewhere between $1 million and $10 million.

Mr. Obey's initial list of 68 creditors includes what are thought to be 43 former Ford Maumee Stamping plant employees who returned in the fall of 2008 to their former plant on Illinois Avenue in Maumee to try to reopen the 803,000-square-foot factory as Maumee Authority Stamping Inc.

The company tried to get auto-related work for eight months with minimal success. The operation was evicted from the plant in May, 2009, a month after it landed a small contract with Ford to produce catalytic converters.

Also among the creditors is 920 Illinois Ave. LLC, a private investment partnership that owns the now-vacant plant.

The bankruptcy filing remains incomplete, with several documents to be filed by Jan. 26. But in it, Mr. Obey indicates his debts are primarily business debts. Maumee Authority Stamping Inc., of which Mr. Obey was president and chief executive officer, is among the creditors.

The filing indicated Mr. Obey's assets total less than $50,000. He could not be reached for comment.

Among the creditors is Clarence Kujawski, 64, of Monroe, who was among the 43 employees who paid $16,000 each to invest in Maumee Authority Stamping and, according to Mr. Obey's promises, get a full-time job eventually when the company succeeded.

"I shouldn't have invested, but I don't know that I would have done anything differently. When you're out of a job you do what you can," said Mr. Kujawski, who has since found full-time employment at a tool-and-die shop in Michigan.

"It was one of those things that you try for and you lose out. I think that hurt -- the loss of a job -- more than losing the money. It's something you chalk up to experience," he said.

Mr. Kujawski said he mostly is interested in learning what stocks Mr. Obey invested employees' money in, so that he can claim those as losses on his taxes. "I figured he would [file bankruptcy] eventually, but I didn't think it would take this long," he added.

Still, Mr. Kujawski said he thinks the venture was not a scam but rather an honest but failed attempt to revive the plant.

"I think down deep he might have been sincere and wanted it to work -- it would have benefited him in the long run had it worked out -- but he didn't have the know-how or the experience to take on a venture of that kind," he said. "A lot of lives were destroyed in the process."

Contact Jon Chavez at: jchavez@theblade.com or 419-724-6128.