Navistar move to boost company's area workforce to 3,000
(Crain's) — Navistar International Corp. said Wednesday that it would employ almost 3,000 people in the Chicago area as part of deal to move its headquarters to Lisle from Warrenville and relocate jobs from outside Illinois.
The company thanked Gov. Pat Quinn and other officials for brokering the deal after the truckmaker had balked in the face of resident opposition.
The move to the former Alcatel-Lucent S.A. complex in west suburban Lisle allows the company to keep or create almost 3,000 permanent jobs along with 400 construction jobs in the next several years, Navistar said in a release.
Lisle village officials last year said Navistar planned to bring 900 jobs to the area, many of them expected to come from research facility in Fort Wayne, Ind. The influx of jobs would be one of the largest business expansions in the state in recent years.
The new headquarters will not include a controversial engine-testing operation, which instead may go to the company's Melrose Park facility, where Navistar says it is planning an $80-million investment. The company has “multiple options” in Illinois if Melrose Park is not selected, and hopes to finalize the decision on where the testing operation will be in the next couple months, Don Sharp, a vice-president who is leading the relocation project for Navistar, told Crain's.
Navistar plans to pay about $34 million for the Alcatel-Lucent campus and hopes to close on the purchase by the end of November, Mr. Sharp says. The company will spend about another $76 million on the site, and the first workers are to move there in late spring or early summer, he says.
Most of the 3,000 jobs will be at the Lisle campus.
Illinois has pledged almost $65 million in incentives, including tax credits and job-training money, the governor's office said in a separate release.
Gov. Quinn “stood up for good-paying jobs, for economic development and for Lisle and Navistar,” company CEO Dan Ustian said in the release from the governor's office. “We are grateful to his administration and to Attorney General Lisa Madigan for her leadership.”
The announcement comes about 3½ months after Navistar said it was reopening its search for a new headquarters, citing Lisle residents' opposition to the planned move.
