Navistar future unknown in Fort Wayne

FORT WAYNE, IND. (WANE) - The future of more than a thousand Fort Wayne jobs continues to hang in the balance.

Navistar continues to eye a new campus in suburban Chicago, which would replace a current headquarters in Warrenville, Illinois.

The existing Warrenville headquarters employs roughly 1,800 people at most, a company spokesperson said Thursday.

But a proposed new campus in Lisle, Illinois is being designed to house nearly 3,500 workers, all under one roof.

In Fort Wayne, Navistar employs nearly 1,300 people at its Meyer Road office and a Wayne Trace office, with employees at both facilities largely working on engineering and design for some of the Navistar/International line of products.

A company spokesperson confirms that the Navistar will be incorporating some offices into the new Lisle facility, if plans for it go forward.

The spokesperson would not say where those jobs and employees would come from, meaning it’s still possible that Fort Wayne jobs could be moved into the Lisle campus.

That facility is still awaiting various approvals. A company spokesperson says it’s too soon to comment on the Fort Wayne office's future.

Navistar began truck production in Fort Wayne back in 1923. The City of Fort Wayne reports that Navistar was given $8 million in tax abatements on the Meyer Road property in 1999, with a $100,000 job creation grant from the City of Fort Wayne in 2005; along with a $500,000 grant from the City of Fort Wayne in 2006 that is disbursed annually through 2010.