Fort Wayne fighting to keep 800+ jobs

FORT WAYNE, IND. (WANE) - Fort Wayne Mayor Tom Henry and three other city officials met with Navistar representatives Tuesday. This comes on the heels of previous reports that the company could possibly downsize its Fort Wayne presence in favor of a new and expanded headquarter operation in Illinois.

As NewsChannel 15 has previously reported, Navistar is eyeing a new campus in suburban Chicago. That would replace a current headquarters in Warrenville, Illinois.

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

But a proposed new campus in Lisle, Illinois is being designed to house nearly 3,500 workers, all under one roof. The expanded number of employees could likely come at a cost of jobs in other cities, like Fort Wayne.

"Navistar is part of the DNA of this community," Fort Wayne Mayor Tom Henry told NewsChannel 15's Matt McCutcheon Tuesday.

Navistar began truck production in Fort Wayne back in 1923 as International Harvester.  In 1982, the company significantly downsized, as its last truck rolled off the assembly line in Fort Wayne; however, its still been a large employer.

In the Summit City, Navistar employs nearly 800 people at its Meyer Road office and at a Wayne Trace office, where employees largely work 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 the 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.

On Tuesday, Mayor Henry and three other city officials met with two Navistar representatives to discuss the company's future in the Summit City.

"We talked about the enhancement of the physical plant, we talked about some of the financial incentives that we could possibly put into place for them and we talked about other types of things we could put on the table to entice them to stay here. We will do everything we can to keep the Navistar plant here," Mayor Henry said.

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.

Mayor Henry says Navistar plans to reach a decision about the Fort Wayne operation in March.