Navistar to shut down, sell site
84-acre location in Melrose Park set for redevelopment
Truck maker Navistar International plans to shut down and sell its Melrose Park manufacturing campus late this year, making way for planned redevelopment of the 84-acre site.
Lisle-based Navistar said the buyer, which it did not identify, plans to redevelop the property into an industrial business park. The plant will close by November, and the sale is expected to be completed by the end of this year, the company said.
In a regulatory filing, Navistar said about half the 500 workers in Melrose Park will be transferred to other facilities. It plans to take an approximately $85 million charge as a result of shutting down the facility, which includes $22 million for employee separation and other pension and post-retirement costs.
“The hardest decision we can make is to part with dedicated colleagues at a property that has been integral to our company’s history,” Persio Lisboa, Navistar president and CEO, said in the statement. “We’re confident the sale of the Melrose Park property will spur a sizeable reinvestment in the community, resulting in new jobs and economic opportunity.”
Mayor Ron Serpico declined to identify a buyer for the property but said a redevelopment is expected to begin next year. “We are confident the new campus will be redeveloped to an even greater and better use in the years ahead. Indeed, we believe that the parcel can be designed to yield a much larger property tax base for the village with significantly more workers,” Serpico said in a statement. “Melrose Park is home to many commercial and industrial companies, and we look forward to welcoming even more of them to our community.”
The site currently has 2 million square feet of manufacturing space, according to real estate data firm CoStar Group.
Navistar had thousands of employees in Melrose Park at the facility’s peak, but it has been cutting back operations for several years. Engines are no longer produced there, and engine testing “has significantly decreased due to reductions in the company’s manufacturing of engines and the trucking industry’s increasing interest in alternative fuel
drivetrains,” the company said.
Navistar is in the process of being acquired by the truck unit of Volkswagen, Traton, in a $3.7 billion deal expected to close by the middle of this year.
Last year, Navistar announced 10% to 30% of pay for salaried, nonunion employees was being deferred, as part of major cost-cutting measures to weather the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, the company also said it was postponing big projects and deferring pension contributions, among other steps. Pay was deferred through August, and it was paid back with 6% interest in November, said Patrick Skarr, a Navistar spokesman.
Melrose Park is known as a manufacturing and distribution hub, in part because of its proximity to O’Hare International Airport.
Last year, Amazon opened a three-building distribution center on the site of the former Maywood Park horse track in the village, about two miles east of Navistar’s property. That redevelopment, by Atlantabased Ridgeline Property Group, is called Chariot Logistics Center.