Five years ago, the headlines were bleak. Now the news is good.
by Heidi Prescott Wieneke
Thor Industries announced in January 2013 that it would leave behind its longtime corporate headquarters in Jackson Center, Ohio, and relocate key executives to Indiana. The owner of operating subsidiaries that, combined, represent the largest manufacturer of recreation vehicles in the country decided to move to Elkhart County. Just five years prior, the city made national headlines in 2008 when it reported an unemployment rate of 15.3 percent, the highest jobless rate in the country. Some newspaper writers went so far as to characterize Elkhart as “ground zero” for unemployment, a figure that even prompted President Barack Obama to visit.
But as cliche as it sounds, what a difference a few years can make. Once a symbol for the recession, Elkhart County has seen its unemployment drop more than 8 points. Thor decided to move its finance, accounting, human resources, legal and information technology employees earlier this year to a new corporate office on Beardsley Avenue because the location is closer to the RV, ambulance and commercial bus manufacturer's production facilities and key suppliers. And because Thor believes in Elkhart County. The relocation, which was completed in March 2013, will only strengthen its long-term relationships with customers and suppliers located primarily in Elkhart and LaGrange counties, says Jeff Tykra, director of corporate development and investor relations.
“As our operations evolved and became more Elkhart-centric, it made sense to move our headquarters,” Tykra says. “Our team is now within a 30-minute drive from almost all of our subsidiaries. We felt it was important to make a statement to have our senior leadership close to our operations.”
Elkhart County recovery
During the throes of the recession, everybody knew somebody who was unemployed in Elkhart County. Some residents still know somebody who is looking for work, says Kyle Hannon, president of the Elkhart County Chamber of Commerce, but Elkhart County is continuing to bounce back from the hard hit.
“We spent a year talking to reporters after the president's visit, reporters who came to gawk at the train wreck. But what they found wasn't a train wreck,” Hannon says. “Things have certainly turned around since then, but we always knew they were going to. I guess the thing I have to keep reminding people is that we haven't been tooting our horn enough. We knew Elkhart County would be back. But when the New York Times says it's the white hot epicenter of the economic meltdown, that's hard to shake.”
Hannon wishes those same reporters would make a return visit.
“The Washington Journal came here later in the recessionary period and the reporter said, ‘I was reading the news about Elkhart and expected to find up a boarded-up Detroit.' What he saw was the amazing attitude people had and how no one was moping around, even though things were really rough. In the last year, we've gone from a place where nobody was looking for workers to everybody looking for workers.”
Granted, unemployment still hovers around 7 percent. City and county officials say they are working on the apparent disconnect: Some businesses say they can't find workers with the right skill sets, but some workers say they can't find a job no matter how hard they look.
Thor and its subsidiaries employ about 8,300 people, including 7,600 people in Elkhart County. The company refurbished an unused building before moving its executives last March to Indiana, creating enough office space and parking to have ample room to host customers, suppliers and investors while showcasing its products. The corporate office is now centrally located to Thor's operations in Elkhart, Goshen, Topeka, Syracuse and Wakarusa.
Drew Industries also moved its headquarters to Elkhart County last year from White Plains, New York. In the spring, Drew announced the corporate move along with a planned investment of more than $12.7 million in area manufacturing facility improvements. Drew, the parent company of two Goshen-based RV, trailer and manufactured home component suppliers, completed the move in October.
The Indiana Economic Development Corp. offered Drew up to $4.3 million in conditional tax credits and up to $200,000 in training grants based on the company's job creation plans. By November 2013, Elkhart County had seen more than $73 million in business investments that translated into nearly 1,500 announced new jobs during the calendar year.
Broadening the Base
But as Elkhart County leaders look toward the future, they want to continue their stronghold in the RV industry while broadening their reach. They are working to define just what that reach looks like as the county moves toward future positioning initiatives, says Dorinda Heiden-Guss, president and CEO of the Economic Development Corp. of Elkhart County.
“We live by the American dream and we embrace it. We have faith. And because of that, there is hope and we're seeing the RV and marine industries flourish again and we need to continue to diversify our market to strengthen it even more,” Heiden-Guss says. “But we want to broaden our reach and broaden our employer base. RVs brought us to the dance and we're going to continue to dance with them. But we're looking at quality opportunities for new dance partners that will impact our region and state.”
Elkhart County has shown a new commitment to prospective developers and businesses, Hannon says, by completing its first three shovel-ready sites. “What it means is that companies that want to come to our area can look at these sites, where the developer has gone through the effort to have everything done for the property so the owner just has to come in and start digging,” he says.
Barkley Garrett, director of economic department with the city of Elkhart, says a number of older industrial facilities have been razed to make way for new industry. This includes the former Elkhart Foundry & Machine Co., the old LaBour Pump Co., the former Walter Piano facility and the Elkhart Armory. These are among the buildings that had become deteriorated and dilapidated and blighted.
“As you drive around the city of Elkhart, we've done an excellent job in the last three years of bringing those facilities down,” Garrett says. “These are properties the private sector won't take a chance on, so our intent has been to put those into productive reuses, including the seven-acre park at the LaBour Pump site where there are now walking paths and community gardens. And we made tables and benches from salvaged limestone from the old Bayer facility.”
Garrett says 2013 was the first full year of operations for the rehabilitated Lerner Theater, which has become a focal point and important achievement for downtown Elkhart redevelopment. An organized downtown revitalization effort called SoMa is working to get more people to live, work and play downtown, he says, and the events and activities at the Lerner Theater are a big part of that effort.
Streamlining Economic Development
He also outlines a recent economic-development endeavor that has helped streamline the application process for companies looking to locate anywhere in the city or county. “Everybody had their own application before. They had their own fee structure and process to follow when a project came to their community. We came up with one consolidated application. Now, no matter the community they're interested in, they follow the same process,” Garrett says.
“When companies or site selectors look at us, they don't care about municipal boundaries. They care about the 30-mile driving radius from which they will draw employees,” he says. “It takes a level of trust for the city and county to share information and know we're not going to steal each other's projects. Sure, we'd love to have a project land in Elkhart every time, but even if a company chooses Goshen, it will employ Elkhart city residents.”
During the recession, some economists were predicting a 30-year recovery for Elkhart. “We went from mountaintops to the depths of the valley in a very short time-frame,” Garrett says. “But what few people in the media reported on were the positive news stories and the resiliency of the community. We went through it before in the '80s, so we know how to weather the storm and reinvent ourselves.”
