By Dan Shaw, Evansville Courier & Press
The city and the Evansville airport plan to chip in together to buy Whirlpool's site in Evansville, a move that was crucial to ensuring 300 employees in the company's product-design center remain here.
Local officials announced that the center will stay in Evansville at a news conference held today. To persuade Whirlpool to keep the center here, officials offered the company a package of incentives.
Chief among them is a plan that will have the city and Evansville Regional Airport buy Whirlpool's site and turn it into an industrial park. Greg Wathen, president and chief executive officer of the Economic Development Coalition of Southwest Indiana, said the hope is to attract other businesses there that likewise specialize in product development and design. Another possibility will be to move the airport's runway onto the site, a change contemplated in order to bring the airport into compliance with Federal Aviation Administration rules.
"Nothing is off the table at this point in time," Wathen said.
Under the current plan, the city or airport authority will borrow money to buy Whirlpool's site. They will then may have the current factory demolished and rebuild a new, much smaller product-development center in its place, although nothing is decided, Wathen emphasized. He said there are parts of the building that still may be reused.
Whirlpool plans to lease the new building back at a price that will cover paying off the debt taken for the project. Purchase and lease prices have not yet been decided, Mayor Jonathan Weinzapfel said.
The city and airport will also help to expand a laboratory at the site now used by the design center.
The status of the 300 workers employed by the design was left undecided when Whirlpool announced plans last month to close its Evansville factory and eliminate about 1,100 jobs involved in manufacturing there.
The possibility that Whirlpool might keep the center here sent local officials scrambling to offer incentives. Wathen said cities in Michigan and Iowa were competing for the same jobs.
Meanwhile, union employees of Whirlpool's Evansville plant will vote Thursday on whether to accept benefits the company plans to give them after it shuts the doors there.
Members of Local 808 of the International Union of Electrical Workers will meet at 5 p.m. at the union's hall on Bergdolt Road to vote on severance payments and other benefits.
Most of the 1,100 workers faced with a job loss are represented by Local 808. Darrell Collins, union president, said negotiations with Whirlpool ended Tuesday after a third meeting between the two sides took place.
He declined to discuss any details of Whirlpool's offer. He wants to first give union members an opportunity to review proposals and vote on them.