Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
The week of Aug. 25, Slate Auto held several public and private events in Warsaw, including at its future manufacturing plant at the former LSC (R.R. Donnelley) plant along Old 30.
Phil LeBeau, a CNBC correspondent who covers the airline and automotive industries for the network, came to Warsaw and interviewed Slate Auto CEO Chris Barman (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DM7MjaJq9No). A segment was recorded for Squawk Box, which Kosciusko Economic Development Corporation (KEDCO) Leadership Partner Suzie Light watches frequently. She’s also a fan of LeBeau.
When she saw that LeBeau was going to be interviewing Barman for Squawk Box, Light knew he was in the city. She ended up getting to meet him and talked to him about the Barman interview, and then got her photo with him.
The CNBC segment. A Wall Street Journal piece. The cover of Car & Driver.
Just three of the many places where Slate Auto - and Warsaw - have received national attention so far since the startup’s announcement it was coming to the county seat of Kosciusko.
KEDCO CEO Peggy Friday said when they went to the Global Economic Conference that Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC) held in Indianapolis, KEDCO had a booth and gave out some Slate stickers.
“Internationally, people have heard of Slate. It’s a startup. We keep reminding ourselves that this isn’t a business that moved from Michigan to here, but it’s actually a startup. And it’s so unique that - because of all that national attention that we’ve had - Warsaw is now in the national conversation, all across the country,” she said.
Light said it was pretty exciting that Phoenix Group, who owns the former Donnelley facility, talked to Friday about having Slate here back when Friday first arrived to be KEDCO’s CEO in 2024.
“It was crazy. We got a phone call from Phoenix Group and they said, ‘Hey, I’m heading to the airport. Do you have a few minutes to talk about Project Racer? Which it would have been at that time. So we ran out to Starbucks at the end of the day and on a napkin kind of sketched out maybe what could potentially go on that property, and then it was a whirlwind from there,” Friday recalled.
Dawn Wilkinson, KEDCO director of projects and operations, said they were put under an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) after that as part of the project process.
“Once that started, then everything started to go forward,” Wilkinson said.
Light said what she learned about economic development is “when these projects - potential projects - come into being, and usually there’s a lot of potential projects out there, but for one to land ... and then to mature, is” a long, if not rare, process.
“We were just really fortunate out of the gate because that property sat vacant for less than a year, and a property that size has specific uses. It was a God thing, I think for all of us, because it landed in our laps right away. And it was the first, I think, big project that the KEDCO group had worked on,” Friday stated.
‘We Want You Here’
Wilkinson said at the first meeting, they knew Warsaw was a potential site, but there were 11 other potential sites in other states.
“We knew that we had to court this company, and investigate the company and make sure it was a company that fit the community ... and it was a company our community would want as well. Not only do they want to be here, but do we want you here? And it just turned into a really good fit, and we were able to bring together some community stakeholders to visit with the folks from Slate in that first meeting, and Suzie was a part of that,” Wilkinson recalled.
Light was the first one to tell Slate, “We want you here.”
Wilkinson said it was a great process to go through and went rapidly, though probably not as rapidly as everyone would have liked it to.
“It was really unique,” Friday said. “I’ve been doing this for 20 years, and never before have I had a site visit where they brought a film crew. And, we thought, ‘Oh, this is a little bit odd, but OK.’ And they filmed that first meeting and then subsequently the second meetings, and they said, ‘We do this because if we choose you, we’ll have a video history of that first meeting and how all that went.’”
Some of that footage was used to honor Kosciusko County Councilman Mike Long, who died earlier this year. Long was excited about Slate Auto coming to the county and also told Slate that “we want you here.” Friday said that was a really neat outcome.
“These people, from the very beginning, were just down to earth. People that cared about the community - they made that abundantly clear. It wasn’t just about bringing Slate here, but that they wanted to fit into the community and that they wanted to feel like they were a part of it,” Friday said.
Wilkinson said Slate are great community partners and are proving that. They’re supporting Cardinal Services’ luncheon and are starting to reach out to the community and become involved, even before they’ve opened their doors.
“And that’s one of the things that Phil LeBeau even mentioned, the fact that Slate is coming into a facility that had been a manufacturing - and he did call it R.R. Donnelley printing company - so it was an industrial site that is being repurposed, and that is a huge boon to our community,” Light said. “At one time, Donnelley was the largest employer in Kosciusko County, and we’ve missed that.”
Wilkinson said just having the diversity is great for the community as well.
“We are so blessed by our orthopedic community and businesses,” she said, but industry diversification is a great thing. “This is just a great way to have another place to work that isn’t necessarily orthopedics. It gives us a little bit of variety. Different skill sets but good careers for people.”
When it was revealed Warsaw would be the only place the Slate auto would be manufactured, Friday said KEDCO’s phone hasn’t stopped ringing. They’re also getting emails from all over the country, especially from people wanting to get into Slate and do business with them.
“So that national coverage brings capital, brings other people who are possibly interested in looking at Warsaw for a potential site for a business, and also talent. They’ve (reserved) so many of those online, so it’s brought a lot of attention as far as talent goes. People that want to check out what employment might be like there, so being on that national stage has really put Warsaw in a different category because everybody knows the orthopedic capital. We hope that we can bring in more advanced manufacturing and kind of become the advanced manufacturing capital as well,” Friday said.
She expects Slate, and thus Warsaw, to stay in the news for at least the next year. She said Slate has done a great job on social media in keeping people’s interest.
“We just anticipate a celebration a year from now when those trucks start rolling off the line,” Friday said, which will likely bring more national attention to the community and the opening.
Housing For Workers
With Slate planning to hire nearly 2,000 people and Autocam Medical bringing hundreds of more jobs, there’s a question of where everyone will live as there’s a housing shortage in the county.
“We partnered with Club 720 and Mission Build to try to identify land all throughout the county that can be used for attainable housing. Just the starter home and nothing fancy, but pretty dense housing developments because just between that project and Autocam, we’re talking about 2,300-2,500 people, and we would love for them to live here because when they do, they’ll spend their money here,” Friday said.
Housing is important, the city is doing its part and KEDCO a year ago started doing its part, she said.
Wilkinson stated, “We’ve been working with many of our smaller communities to identify and have, in some of them at this point - and, hopefully, soon we’ll be able to announce where and what projects are going in sooner. I’d say within the next month I’ll have more on that to share. But, we’ve been working with each of these communities to identify land near the towns, so that they can be a part of the town, to do attainable housing projects.”
She said that’ll look different in each community and will depend on the communities and what their wants and needs are. For some communities, that might just be single-family homes densely populated. For other communities, they want more of a mixed neighborhood that might involve duplexes, single-family homes and maybe a multi-family unit like an apartment complex.
“Each community has different wants and needs and desires they want to see, so we’re trying to be very purposeful in how we get there with each of them,” Wilkinson said. “We’ll continue to work on that very hard because all of the studies show that there is an increase (in population) but there’s a housing shortage. So we know that there’s definitely a need, and so we’re going to try to fulfill that as best as we can.”
Friday said as you bring households to the community, then there’s the potential to grow your commercial and retail spaces, so KEDCO will be strategically working on obtaining retail.
For more about KEDCO, visit https://www.kosciuskoedc.com/
For more about Slate Auto, visit https://www.slate.auto/en
