SPARROWS POINT, Md. — He adds custom touches to brand new BMWs, and Terry Grillo doesn’t mind how far he has to travel from West Virginia each way to get to the company’s new distribution center.
“Three hours. It’s 180 miles,” Grillo told us.
Afterall, the 61-year-old mechanic is returning to his roots where generations of his family worked at Bethlehem Steel and where his life began back in 1960.
“On the way to the hospital, I was born in that car,” said Grillo while showing us a hazy, black and white photo of him as a baby sitting on the hood of a 1951 Henry J automobile. “And it’s just a neat picture of me displayed, and now, here I am working at Sparrows Point.”
BMW waived the typical ribbon-cutting to wave a checkered flag for state and local leaders to get behind the wheel and celebrate the grand opening of its expanded processing center, which will distribute up to 100,000 new vehicles to dealerships up and down the East Coast.
On its face, 75 new jobs and another hundred in the surrounding area may not seem like that many, but they add to the turn around here at Sparrows Point.
“I want to say that the 150,000 jobs that we have here? The 100,000 that we could get here? I want to get to that 100,000 really quick,” said the executive director of the port, Bill Doyle.
“I remember touring Sparrows Point when I was running for governor, coming here when I first got elected---nothing was here,” added Gov. Larry Hogan. “And now, here we are seven years later and we’re leading the world in so many capacities.”
The top port in the country for imported and exported vehicles with businesses like BMW finding new ways to add jobs and to grow our economy, a decade after what was once the top steel mill in the country shut down for good.
“My great-grandfather, yes, he worked for Bethlehem Steel, retired,” said Grillo. “My step-father actually retired from here also. My brother worked here for awhile. My dad worked here, obviously back in the Sixties, cause we were in the housing project for Bethlehem Steel employees. Bethlehem Steel. It’s the history of Baltimore. It’s great to see it revitalized.”
