87 Layoffs Announced As Lake Bluff Manufacturing Facility Closes

LAKE BLUFF, IL — A longtime local manufacturing facility is closing permanently by the end of the year, taking dozens of jobs with it.

Liquid Controls, located for the last 30 years at 105 Albrecht Drive, produces pumps, compressors, air eliminators and precision measuring tools for transferring oil and gas. Company officials notified the Illinois Department of Employment Security of plans to layoff 87 workers at the facility beginning May 24.

The company was co-founded by George Richards and lifelong Lake Bluff and Lake Forest resident and businessman Fred Wacker Jr., a race car driver, jazz musician and socialite — the grandson of the namesake of Chicago's Wacker Drive — back in 1956.

Thanks to the success of an aircraft refueling meter it sold to the U.S. Air Force, the company establish a North Chicago location in the mid-1960s before expanding in the 1980s and moving to Lake Bluff, according to a company history. In 2001, it became a unit of Northbrook-based IDEX Corporation.

Earlier this year, company officials announced plans to consolidate Liquid Controls LLC and another IDEX subsidiary, Oklahoma City-based Corken Inc., and operate together under the name Advance Flow Solutions.

Art Laszlo, president of Liquid Control and Corken, told Patch the decision to consolidate the company's operations into an existing Corken facility in Oklahoma City was the result of "significant long-term changes in the energy and transportation sectors."

The company plans to continue to have an office in the Lake Bluff area for sales, customer service and other administrative support, he said in a statement.

"A number of employees will be relocating to the new location, while all others whose job is being impacted will receive severance benefits," Laszlo said. "We understand the impact this is having on these employees and their families, and have worked with the union to provide our employees with benefits that allow them to transition to new employment opportunities."

In a request for $300,000 in economic development incentive in February, Laszlo told the Oklahoma City Council the company would relocate five or six jobs from the Chicago area and hire the rest of the 120 new positions, the Journal Record reported.

According to a memo from Oklahoma City Manager Craig Freeman, city and state incentives helped convince Corken and company officials to expand in Oklahoma City. The jobs are expected over the next five years, with an average base compensation of about $50,000 plus benefits, city officials said.

Combined, the companies have about 250 employees, according to materials presented to the Oklahoma City Council. The City Council voted 7-1 to approve the incentive on Feb. 16.

According to a worker at the Lake Bluff facility, company officials previously told employees the closure was due to the pandemic. The worker, who asked not to be named for legal reasons, said a large portion of the manufacturing business is being outsourced to India and Italy.

"And to make things worse, they have brought people for Oklahoma here for us to train to do our jobs. This is disgraceful at its best," the employee said. "I think these things should be known because we've worked really hard to make this business successful and to have it ripped from our bowels is disheartening to say the least."

The last layoffs at the Lake Bluff facility will be complete in November, and company representatives plan to permanently close the site by the end of the year. According to county property records, Liquid Controls LLC has owned the nearly 10-acre Lake Bluff site since the early 1990s.