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Navistar International Corp. is deep into a yearlong process that is likely to result in Fort Wayne losing most of the company’s engineering operations to suburban Chicago.
But area economic development leaders are working along two tracks: seeing what they can do to keep the Truck Design and Technology Center and its 850 employees in Fort Wayne; and, if they can’t, trying to keep parts of the operation and even individual employees from departing for the west.
Navistar won’t say publicly that it wants to scale back in Fort Wayne, but since early this year it has been drawing up plans and jumping through governmental hoops to consolidate headquarters and design operations in a vacant corporate campus in Lisle, Ill.
The company has posted a page on its Web site called “Navistar Good Neighbor News” that’s devoted to answering questions and dispelling rumors about the contemplated move to Lisle.
“Whenever and wherever we conduct business we aim to keep our stakeholders and our communities informed,” the Web page says.
In government filings and public hearings, Navistar has said it wants to bring Fort Wayne engineers and more than 900 out-of-state jobs to Lisle.
But company spokesman Roy Wiley wouldn’t say last week how many employees Navistar has in Fort Wayne or how many it wants to move to Lisle.
“I never answer ‘if’ questions,” Wiley said. “If there’s something to announce, we’ll announce it.”
The Navistar Web site, however, says 849 work at the Truck Design and Development Center at 2911 Meyer Road.
In March, Navistar told the city that 1,015 worked at the center, which also operates a test track nearby on Oxford Street. Navistar made the statement in documents the company is required to file in exchange for a $500,000 taxpayer grant.
An additional 135 work at the Truck Reliability Center at 3033 Wayne Trace. Workers at that facility provide a variety of post-production services to dealers, customers and designers.
Andi Udris, president of the Fort Wayne-Allen County Economic Development Alliance, said he has little doubt that Navistar wants to reduce its presence in Fort Wayne.
“I think we know exactly what they’re doing,” Udris said. “It’s not a question of if. It’s a question of when and how many.”
Udris said his agency is preparing a proposal to keep the truck design center, or at least some workers, in Fort Wayne.
Udris declined to describe the offer until he makes it to Navistar. That likely will happen before Thanksgiving, he said.
But what leverage would local officials have over a company that wants to consolidate its engineering and headquarters into a location that’s about five miles from where the bigwigs work now?
Fort Wayne Mayor Tom Henry might have hinted at the answer last week. He said he has a relative who works at the Fort Wayne truck design center. Henry said he’s heard that senior employees are OK with moving to Chicago’s western suburbs.
“But you talk to the middle- and low-level engineers and they don’t want to leave,” Henry said.
For Navistar’s younger engineers, Fort Wayne’s much lower cost of living likely is a strong inducement to stick around.
For Navistar, the brainpower that helps it develop newer and better products is an inducement to keep those employees on the payroll, said Karl LaPan, president and CEO of the Northeast Indiana Innovation Center.
Many patents have been issued for technologies designed at the truck design center, LaPan said.
If the minds behind that innovation think they’d like to strike out on their own, LaPan said he’d like to help – regardless of Navistar’s plans for Fort Wayne.
“Whatever business decision Navistar makes, we’re here for the home team,” LaPan said.
The center provides counseling and office and lab space to budding businesses.
LaPan said it’s common for employees of established companies to receive confidential consultation.
“The center regularly has conversations with people in large companies who might want to pursue their own dreams,” LaPan said. “Those are conversations we have every day.”
There also might be spots elsewhere in the regional economy for Navistar professionals who might not to move to Illinois.
The regional defense industry employs at least 7,600 and is expected to hire an additional 4,000 by 2014. Further, the defense companies always are looking for engineering talent.
But talent for designing over-the-road trucks might not be what area companies that make defense gizmos are looking for, said Bruce Menshy, director of operations at Raytheon Systems Co.’s Fort Wayne facility. Menshy also co-chairs an initiative to size up the region’s defense industry and plan for its future.
“I would assume that most of the folks over there have a background in mechanical engineering,” Menshy said. “But at the defense companies around here, I’d estimate that 75 percent of our engineers are in software, electrical or systems.”
But Menshy said mechanical engineers are part of advanced-manufacturing operations of defense and medical-device companies.
