Top business stories: North-Central Indiana update.

• Author: Mayer, Kathy
• Position: Regional Report: North-Central

TIPPECANOE COUNTY

Lafayette stands to gain a $194 million expansion at Caterpillar, Tippecanoe County's second-largest industrial employer with 1,600 workers. Passage of an economic-development bill at the state level paved the way for the project at the gas and diesel engine plant.

The county's largest employer, Subaru-Isuzu Automotive Inc. in Lafayette, with 3,000 associates, recently brought its $167 million engine-assembly plant on line. It also began production of the new Subaru Baja, a sport-utility vehicle with a pickup-truck bed.

MailCode--which employs 120 and makes voice-recognition systems and Internet-based track-and trace applications, among other mail equipment, at its Lafayette facility--is planning an expansion. And United Kingdom-based Elmsteel Ltd., a supplier of automotive tube components which built its first and only U.S. plant in Lafayette in 2000, doubled its size and boosted employment from 25 to 39.

These four demonstrate the county's "significant strength in advanced manufacturing," says Mike Brooks, president of Greater Lafayette Progress Inc.

On a more sobering note, Wabash National, the 16-year-old publicly traded truck/trailer manufacturer that once employed as many as 5,000, now employs less than half that and continues to face declining markets. Bill Greubel has taken over as the new CEO, and the company projects it will build about 38,000 units this year.

In the science and high-tech sector, Bioanalytical Systems Inc. is spending $5 million to expand its West Lafayette facility. The pharmaceutical-development company employs 175 locally and provides contract research services and analytical systems to pharmaceutical, drug-development and medical-device companies.

Two new hotels open this fall: A 104-room Hilton Garden Inn at West Lafayette's Wabash Landing, and a 142-room Holiday Inn Select City Centre in downtown Lafayette.

HOWARD COUNTY

Kokomo's top employer--DaimlerChrysler, with a workforce of 9,610--also is the county's top newsmaker this year as it builds a 600,000-square-foot, $500 million facility for a new transmission line scheduled to begin production late this year. This follows on the heels of the recently completed $1 billion new transmission plant.

With the second-largest employer, Delphi Delco's automotive electronics plant, at 8,500 workers, and third-largest Haynes International keeping 750 on the job making high-performance alloys, manufacturing remains king in Kokomo. But that's not shutting out opportunities for small high-tech businesses, reports Greg Aaron, president of the Kokomo/Howard County Development Corp. The Kokomo Technology Task Force learned in April that an independent...