West-Central Indiana update.

• Author: Nelson, Eric
• Position: Benton, Carroll, Clinton, Fountain, Montgomery, Tippecanoe, Warren & White Counties - Regional Report West Central

Anchored both geographically and economically by Tippecanoe County, the eight counties in West-Central Indiana are continuing to grow, making the area one of the state's leading sources of new jobs and industry in the last decade.

The most significant developments have occurred in Greater Lafayette, where trailer manufacturer Wabash National Corp. has emerged as Tippecanoe County's leading supplier of new jobs. Led by President and CEO Jerry Ehrlich, Inc. magazine's 1993 "Entrepreneur of the Year," the locally founded company has finished a 100,000-square-foot expansion of its Sagamore Parkway plant that has already created 350 new skilled jobs, according to Mike Brooks, president of Greater Lafayette Progress Inc.

Wabash National also recently purchased one of the two long-vacant General Foods plants on Lafayette's south side. Site improvements began this summer, Brooks says, and the company will begin operations at the facility in September. Currently employing 2,400, the truck-trailer production company is expected to add another 400 jobs within the next year. "That will clearly make them the largest private-sector employer in Tippecanoe County," he says.

Job growth also is expected at A.E. Staley, which has agreed to purchase another portion of the General Foods site. Tax abatements totaling $190 million will double the capacity of the company's south plant in Lafayette, reports Brooks, and another $40 million in abatements will bring new equipment to the north plant. The company currently employs 500 across its two facilities.

Improvements also are being made at Eli Lilly's Tippecanoe Laboratories, which consistently provides the county with more than 1,300 jobs. The complex, already more than one million square feet, has a new pharmaceutical manufacturing building under construction.

Also among last year's economic highlights was Great Lakes Chemical's move into its new corporate headquarters in West Lafayette. The new facility ensures that the company's presence in Tippecanoe County will only continue to grow, Brooks says. Currently, more than 300 are employed by the chemical manufacturer.

But Greater Lafayette's growth hasn't been industrial alone, Brooks notes. A $14 million expansion of State Farm Insurance's facilities in the Purdue Research Park has just been finished, and should push employment beyond the current 600. And more than 100 new jobs already have been added at Bank One's credit-card division in downtown Lafayette.

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