Engineer chases restaurant dream after layoff

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. — Like many men, Randy Gelsthorpe dreamed of one day owning his own bar and restaurant.

When his employer, Electrolux, announced early last year that it would be closing its Bloomington office, Gelsthorpe was disappointed but only half-surprised. The company and its predecessors have a rich Twin City history that stretches back nearly 90 years, but its local footprint has been shrinking for decades.

Instead of relocating to a new Electrolux headquarters in Charlotte, N.C., like many of his co-workers, the senior tooling engineer started looking into buying his own business and staying in the Twin Cities. By November, he saw that The Caboose, a historic Bloomington eatery at 608 W. Seminary Ave., was for sale. Recently, he officially reopened it as owner, along with his wife, Janet.

“I’m scared and excited all at the same time,” said Gelsthorpe, 57, of Bloomington.

This summer’s closure of Electrolux’s Home Care Products headquarters office, 807 N. Main St., will scatter about 180 employees. About 90 are moving to Charlotte, out of the 140 who were offered the chance, said Electrolux spokeswoman Caryn Klebba. Their approximate start date in Charlotte is July 25.

Some of the other 90 employees have left since the closure announcement. Gelsthorpe’s last day is July 21.

The move is part of Electrolux’s nationwide office consolidation plan, a strategic move that is expected to produce “significant efficiencies,” Klebba said. A dollar amount on the savings was not available.

“This is certainly a difficult decision to make,” Klebba said. “This is a necessary and positive move for our future. And it also comes with an appreciation for the contributions we’ve made to Bloomington, and the contributions Bloomington has made to our company.”

Gelsthorpe said he considered moving to Charlotte, but his wife’s job at District 87 and their desire to keep their 35-year-old developmentally disabled son in Bloomington-Normal cooled them to the idea.

He said many of his co-workers who are moving appear to be excited. Employees who will not be relocating will receive severance and medical benefits through the company’s “special enhanced severance program” related to the headquarters consolidation, plus other training assistance, Klebba said.

By mid-August, the bulk of the employees will be gone, and Electrolux will not retain a presence in Bloomington after the consolidation is complete. The future of the building is not yet determined, Klebba said.

The employees now there are primarily in the floor care unit — Electrolux sells the Eureka brand vacuum — and include professional staff, product developers, brand and marketing personnel, and human resources.

During its heyday in the mid-1940s, the company’s predecessor filled military contracts and employed as many as 3,000 locally. By 1981, that had fallen to 1,300 factory workers, but The Eureka Co. (as it was then called) was still the largest Twin City industrial employer, making vacuums and other goods.

Local production ended when the Fort Jesse Road plant closed in 2000. Today, part of Gelsthorpe’s job is to buy tooling for Electrolux’s vacuum manufacturing plant in Juarez, Mexico.

Electrolux’s final exit punctuates how many fewer opportunities there are in the Twin Cities for “good paying jobs for people who are good with their hands,” said McLean County Museum of History Director Greg Koos. And it comes as McLean County’s unemployment rate stands at 6.2 percent, relatively low among the state’s metropolitan areas but still about double pre-recession levels.

“It closes another chapter on the kinds of industrial jobs that made Bloomington-Normal a successful and blue-collar community,” Koos added.

For Gelsthorpe, a first-time business owner, running The Caboose will be an adjustment. He will be supervising a dozen people (including his 20-year-old son). “I supervise steel,” he said of his Electrolux job. Next, he wants to create a website and Facebook page and host a “grand reopening.”

“This is away from the desk, this is away from the office,” Gelsthorpe said. “This is gonna be my dream.”