FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WPTA21) - A group of powerful business leaders have stepped up to try and ensure the world headquarters of Do it Best Corporation doesn't leave Allen County.
The home improvement chain committed to being the anchor tenant in Electric Works, but uncertainty about the future of that project, which involves a mammoth restoration of the old GE campus, is raising concerns that Do it Best might go elsewhere.
Do it Best, which has its corporate operations center currently in New Haven, has annual sales approaching $4-billion.
But there's wide speculation that the headquarters is at risk of being re-located, and that's precisely why CEOs from other large local employers paid for a study to quantify Do it Best's value to the Allen County economy.
Sweetwater Sound President and CEO Chuck Surack, car dealer Tom Kelley, and Steel Dynamics President and CEO Mark Millett are among those who commissioned the Community Research Institute at Purdue Fort Wayne to run some key numbers.
Taking into account new hiring Do it Best has pledged to do, the study found that if the company does move its worldwide headquarters outside this region, it would cost Allen County the equivalent of more than 830 jobs and more than $117-million annually for the local economy.
Surack believes Do it Best CEO Dan Starr would prefer to keep the headquarters local, but he says what the board of directors wants-- a group with no real ties to Fort Wayne-- is a different matter entirely.
"And so I think that's the risk we have as a community, that if it gets out of Dan's hands and it gets to the Board of Directors of Do it Best, it'll be up to them where the company moves to. So, that's why we have to fight really really hard to keep this thing here," Surack said.
Rachel Blakeman with the Community Research Institute, who performed the study, says world headquarter jobs often carry greater value, because when you have corporate leaders in your community they tend to support charitable causes and make other investments in ways other companies just don't do.
"There's a level of prestige of being able to say you are the home of…and then insert whatever company name it is, and so, once you lose it, you're not going to get it back," Blakeman said.
Fort Wayne has a painful history on this subject matter.
Over the past quarter century, the city lost the headquarters of Lincoln Financial Corporation and Central Soya.
The Fort Wayne Redevelopment Commission in early August terminated an economic development agreement with RTM Ventures, claiming the Electric Works developers failed to meet a key deadline to secure private financing.
RTM Ventures insists it has finances ready to move forward on the project, but it's not clear if Electric Works will get built.
Do it Best Corporation declined comment for this story.
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