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The site once housed an International Harvester/Navistar factory until it closed in 2002. It didn’t reopen until 2013 after Springfield, Navistar, the Chamber of Greater Springfield and other entities spent about a decade cleaning up industrial contaminants and improving infrastructure at the site.
The OEDA is professional association for economic developers and this is the first time the CIC has won the statewide award.
DETAILS: Honda, Toyota supplier to add 85 jobs, build $55M Springfield plant
Initially it appeared Springfield didn’t have the kind of facility Topre was looking for, said Horton Hobbs, vice president of economic development for the CIC. But Hobbs and other local leaders convinced Topre to lease five acres of the business park for its operations.
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Three months later, that deal blossomed into a $55 million investment that’s expected to create 85 jobs in a 177,000-square-foot facility, with the expectation that even more jobs might be on the way in the coming years.
“It provides life, it provides revitalization and hope to an area of our community that had been vacant and dormant for nearly 20 years,” Hobbs said.
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The deal required years of effort from multiple entities, said Tom Franzen, assistant city manager and director of economic development for Springfield.
“Everyone understood the magnitude of this project and the impact it could have on the state as well as our community,” Franzen said. “Everybody pulled their own weight and did a lot of work to convince Topre this was the right location, but also work to overcome a lot of challenges and concerns that were raised along the way.”
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