THERMA-GONE?

I really, really hope I'm wrong about this. From all reports, Carol Latham has been a spectacular entrepreneur, a model employer and good citizen of her neighborhood. Maybe she really believes that her company can continue to prosper on Detroit Avenue as a small division of its new multinational owner. Maybe she's right.

But...

Here we have a $15 million-a-year patent-driven family-owned startup, with less than a hundred employees, being bought by a multinational with 4,500 employees spread around dozens of facilities in ten countries, with annual sales between $700 and $800 million. The new owner, Laird Group, has already bought two other thermal-product companies in the last seven months to add to its Laird Technologies division, which makes a wide range of components for circuit board manufacturers -- Thermagon's main market. The biggest, fastest-growing piece of that market is in Asia. In the last four years Laird has closed plants and laid off workers in the U.S. and Britain, while making major investments in production capacity in China, Korea and Japan.

So how long will Latham get to run Laird's "thermal materials business worldwide" and produce Thermagon's products -- mostly for export to China and other faraway circuit-board centers -- from that rehabbed building at West 47th and Detroit, with her "special culture" of neighborhood workers? And what happens when she retires?

Thermagon, our spunky inner-city tech startup with a heart of gold, has been one of Cleveland's favorite business stories for years. But it turns out we've only been reading the first chapter. Now it's Chapter 2, the entrepreneur has cashed out, the spunky startup is suddenly part of a big global machine, and the characters and plot become a lot more complicated.

Will this still be a Cleveland story? Will it end happily for Thermagon's West Side workers and neighbors? Will the Laird Group keep the dream alive on Detroit?

I sure hope so. But so far, this neighborhood hasn't seen a lot of happy endings.