LGSTX Cargo Services Inc. will lay off 296 workers, while LGSTX Services Inc. will lay off 37, according to new notices filed with the state.
BETTER DAYS: Amazon's involvement once held promise for area air park.
Global Flight Source Inc., also at the Wilmington Air Park, will lay off two workers, the company reported.
The move was expected, said Daniel Evers, executive director of the Clinton County Port Authority, which owns the air park, a former Air Force base.
Those jobs can be replaced “over time,” Evers said.
“We have continued to pursue other opportunities,” he said.
Evers said the air park last week announced a new tenant. The Columbus-based law offices of Robert A. Schuerger Co. leased 4,400 square feet of office space at the park. The business will operate a legal office and a call center there, with 50 new jobs expected.
The new office “diversifies our employment base,” Evers said. The company is new to Wilmington and Clinton County and represents a new kind of operation for the air park, he said.
The lease term is about five years, with a five-year renewal option, the park said.
“We continue to pursue aviation and air park-related opportunities, as well as more broadly manufacturing and distribution opportunities,” Evers said.
“We’re obviously going to redouble those efforts,” he added.
A month ago, Joe Hete, president and chief executive of Air Transport Services Group (ATSG), which is based at the Wilmington facility, told this news outlet that about 300 people would likely lose their jobs at Wilmington Air Park as a result of Amazon's decision at the time to build a global cargo hub at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport.
RELATED: Amazon operation helps grow Wilmington company
LGSTX is part of ATSG.
On Tuesday, Hete said a recent job fair was held at the air park to assist those who are subject to the WARN notice. Also, a severance-retention program is being offered to keep those workers employed until the end of the April, when the Amazon operation is scheduled to be shut down.
A spokesman for Amazon, Jim Billimoria, said in an email that Amazon plans to offer job opportunities at any Amazon site across the U.S. to those involved in the package sorting that happens today in Wilmington.
At the time of Amazon’s decision, Gov. John Kasich said Amazon picked Northern Kentucky over Wilmington in large part because the airport in Covington has plenty of capacity and the Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky metro area has the workforce.
“They were very worried about the workforce,” Kasich said at at the time.
He noted that his administration was heavily involved in wooing Amazon but in the end the state can’t dictate where a company locates.
“They’re still going to be here in our region,” Kasich said.
The air park has weathered far worse storms. When air cargo carrier DHL shut down its hub at Wilmington in 2008, some 8,000 area jobs were lost.
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