Pratt & Whitney has been bidding a long goodbye to East Hartford on and off for more than 15 years.
Company executives said in the early 1990s that Pratt had plans to pack it in and leave town, although they’ve backed away from those statements more recently.
Still, last week’s announcement that Pratt plans to shut its East Hartford commercial engine blade and vane repair operation, as well as its Cheshire engine services plant, revived workers’ memories of Pratt’s often-expressed goal of consolidating all Connecticut operations in one place — which would not be East Hartford.
On more than one occasion in early 1990s, Karl J. Krapek, a former president of Pratt and later chief operating officer at corporate parent United Technologies Corp., discussed Pratt’s grand plan to consolidate operations at Pratt’s Middletown plant.
In February 1994, Krapek said in a meeting of Pratt’s middle management employees that he wanted to move his executive offices and the rest of the East Hartford operation to Middletown. The East Hartford property should be sold off, he said, “because it is too valuable to do anything else with it.”
About a month after that, Krapek ramped up the rhetoric during a question-and-answer session with employees, in which he described a tentative timetable.
“Probably by the end of the year 2005, this facility will have all moved to Middletown,” Krapek said of the East Hartford headquarters.
Krapek was backed up in 1994 by former UTC CEO George David, who told shareholders that Pratt’s departure from East Hartford was probably about “three, four, five years away.”
Krapek retired from UTC in 2002; David was succeeded by former Pratt President Louis Chenevert, and David Hess has led Pratt since January 2009.
Still, speculation about Pratt’s retrenchment in East Hartford has gathered momentum since 1994 when it abandoned Rentschler Field, its former private airport.
A 40,000-seat, $91 million stadium for University of Connecticut football was built on a portion of the property, and in 2007, a Cabela’s 185,000-square-foot hunting, fishing, and outdoor gear store opened nearby.
Federal and local officials for years have eyed land around the stadium as a possible site for a high-tech research and science park.
A UTC corporate official last week referred questions about the company’s East Hartford plans to Pratt, where spokesman Matthew Perra flatly denied that the company plans to leave East Hartford.
“We have no plans to close the East Hartford facility,” Perra said.
“The high cost of doing business in Connecticut means that we need to focus our efforts here on the highest value-added work,” he said.
“Our most complex machining work, proprietary technologies, and system integration-assembly and testing — the kinds of operations that demand close interaction between our engineers and our skilled machinists — can make sense here.”
East Hartford Mayor Melody A. Currey also said that she’s fairly certain Pratt will not abandon the town altogether.
Pratt’s presence in East Hartford has declined from a peak of 30,000 workers in the 1960s to fewer than 8,000 workers today, Currey acknowledged.
But she said the decline is more a factor of the way Pratt conducts business today — shipping much of its production work offshore — than it is a harbinger of any plan to shutter its flagship operation.
“I don’t see them leaving East Hartford,” she said, adding Pratt’s presence in town appears to be evolving into more engineering and development and less manufacturing.
State Sen. Gary D. LeBeau, D-East Hartford, also expressed skepticism about Pratt’s leaving East Hartford.
“I don’t know that it’s part of Pratt’s long-term plan,” LeBeau said Friday.
“To some degree, we’re looking at worldwide competitive forces,” he said. “If we can be as competitive here, we can retain a significant work force,.”
Likewise, U.S. Rep. John B. Larson, D-1st District, said he’s confident that Pratt will remain in East Hartford.
“Pratt has given us no indication that they are moving ahead with plans to leave East Hartford,” Larson said. “I spoke to their leadership last week, and they gave no indication of any intention to leave.
“We want and expect them to maintain robust operations,” he said of Pratt’s East Hartford presence.
