The Pilot News - Wa-Nee area welcomes EMC

The California-based EMC plans to bring in companies that manufacturer chassis and other components of electric hybrid RVs and light-, medium- and heavy-duty trucks. Cashen's first public announcement came last Wednesday, May 13 during a special session of the Nappanee Common Council and the Wakarusa Town Council at the Nappanee Public Library.
The next morning at a press conference at the DeMartini facility in Wakarusa, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels welcomed Cashen and expressed his support and optimism for his endeavors.
Cashen's vision, in essence, is to have Wa-Nee doing what it has always done, but in a new way.
"What that really means," he said, "we're going to take motorhomes, we're going to take light-duty trucks, we're going to take heavy-duty trucks, the stuff we already make, and we're going to make them electric. We're going to make them hybrid electric."
Cashen chose the Wa-Nee area in large part because of it existing facilities and available work force.
"There are so many people who know how to do stuff here and have such a high skill level," he said. "We have the resources, we have the facilities."
A former Mishawaka resident and Penn High School graduate, Cashen contacted Wakarusa Town Manger Tom Roeder several months ago to propose his idea. Roeder then contacted Nappanee Mayor Larry Thompson, and together the three of them — Cashen, Roeder and Thompson — began discussing how to make the Wa-Nee Electric Vehicle Industrial Complex a reality.
"We're faced with the challenge of unemployment here in Indiana," Cashen said. "We're faced with the challenge of unemployment across the whole United States and throughout the world. It's been a terrible thing and it's really been tough on all of us and I think the big opportunity for us is that ... it's a window that we never had before because we were never forced in this position ... we were never forced to have to figure out what we're going to do tomorrow. We were never forced to answer to a banker about making a payment on the house, because we all had jobs and it was a pretty good here."
EMC has partnered with Gulf Stream Coach in Nappanee, which has had to lay off hundreds of workers and close some of its buildings.
"We're extremely excited about the technology and everything," Gulf Stream owner Shea said. "It's really the thing of the future, and Wil and his group at EMC have been fantastic to work with. It's really been exciting."
According to information released by the governor's office, Gulf Stream expects to see a workforce increase of perhaps 1,200 jobs, as well as the reopening of one of its now-unused plants.
However, this will not happen overnight.
"This is not going to be a free ride," Cashen said. "This is not going to be super easy. This is going to be hard."
Cashen projected that within a year things should be well underway. He has already chosen his location at S.R. 19 and Nelson's Parkway in Wakarusa, to launch his project.
"We want to open up the opportunity to let new things come here to this area, therefore giving us maybe a much longer program that will give us a longer-life experience with manufacturing with different products and parts, things we're going to make here that we never had to do before," he said.
From there, Cashen hopes to set up a facility for research and development and a system for worker education.
"We are not interested in training people who worked at Monaco and lost their job how to do e-mail," he said. "We're interested in training people who lost their job how to work around 400-volt vehicles. They already know how to set a floor. They already know how to set a wall. They already understand that. What we're going to do is train them how to be around 350 to 400 volts and do that."
EMC has already had interest from several companies, including an electric motor manufacturer from England, an electric chassis company out of Detroit that he said is actually a component of the Ford Motor Company and several others.
Daniels spoke highly of Cashen and EMC.
"I am just so filled with thankfulness and hope that because of who you are and what Elkhart County is and because, of course, the Prodigal Son, the wonderful dream we happen to share passionately, we are here today and know that we are in the first day of a great new chapter not just in this area but in our state and I believe in a transformative way a big piece of the world's economy," Daniels said.
Daniels used the metaphor of the Biblical story of the Prodigal Son to describe Cashen because of his return from California to his home state of Indiana.
Daniels expressed hope that the coming of EMC will play a major role in getting Indiana's economy back on its feet.
"Years from now when somebody's child says daddy what was this big recession of 2008 -09 and how did we get out of it," he said, "those of us who were here today will say well it all started on a day in May in Wakarusa."
Dorinda Heiden-Guss of the Elkhart County Economic Development Corporation also looks forward to what Cashen's vision could bring to the area.
""We look to Wil Cashen with his vision for Electric Motors corporation and what he sees Elkhart County's purpose to be and how we might all embrace that," she said. "We look forward to the deliverable and what we can expect from Electric Motors Corporation working in partnership with Gulf Stream."