--
May 21--As United and Continental executives hammer out plans to meld their airlines into the world's largest carrier, construction speeds ahead on one of the merged company's loftiest emblems: United's cutting-edge operations center in the Willis Tower.
Where Bank of America traders once tracked the world's financial markets, United's dispatchers will guide thousands of its airplanes around the globe from the tower's 28th floor. It's the highest of nine floors United will occupy in the tallest skyscraper in the U.S.
Outfitted with giant screens flashing weather updates and flight delays, brand-new flight-planning and communications systems and even its own water supply, United's new nerve center will borrow the best from other airlines and Chicago's emergency responders, said Donald Dillman, vice president of United's operations control center.
The center, and thousands of United's employees, could have ended up in Houston in the horse trading leading to the carrier's May 3 merger announcement, sources said. If the airlines had carried through with their merger plans in 2008, United's operations would have headed to Texas.
That they didn't is a boon for the cash-strapped city of Chicago, which drew criticism for agreeing last year to give United $35.9 million in incentives to shift 2,500 workers from the suburbs to Willis Tower, a move that skeptics claimed the airline would have made anyway.
Still, the operations center and offices United is constructing at Willis are quickly becoming a flash point for workers at both airlines who are uneasy about the merger and unhappy with the long commutes they'll face to downtown.
While the airlines are months away from reaching key staffing decisions, they've already made one call: Continental's flight dispatchers and other workers who coordinate flights are headed to the new center. Continental CEO Jeff Smisek, who will lead the merged carrier, delivered the news in person the week after the merger to the roughly 215 employees who run Continental's control center in downtown Houston, sources said.
"Neither dispatch group is going to be happy going downtown," said John Plowman, president of the union representing 120 Continental flight dispatchers. "Whether or not they want to admit it, there's a cost to that."
Also, the payout due United is fodder for critics of the city's economic development strategy of devoting substantial tax increment financing dollars to keep or attract corporate headquarters. They will get another chance to question the city's incentive package for United, which will have to be approved again by the City Council after the merger closes late this year.
"You have a marriage of two high-profile projects," said Rachel Weber, an urban development specialist at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "The city had to do something: Willis was hemorrhaging tenants, and United had its share of problems. For the building itself and occupants, it made sense. But it was an awful lot of money for a relocation that many would argue they had decided on anyway."
The construction under way at Willis helped persuade Continental executives to place the merged carrier's operations headquarters in Chicago, about a half-mile away from its world headquarters at 77 W. Wacker Drive, sources told the Tribune.
But another factor is the redevelopment agreement that United signed with the city in September for its move to Willis, formerly the Sears Tower.
The city agreed to one of the largest single grants ever made on the condition that United would continue to keep its operations headquarters at Willis in the event of a merger or suffer a politically embarrassing default on its city funding, documents show. There's a similar clawback provision attached to the $5.4 million that the city gave United to help move its corporate headquarters into the city in 2007.
The provisions were a smart way for the city to protect its investment in a company that had struggled through bankruptcy and had been the subject of merger rumors for years, Weber said.
"I was adamant that if they moved offices, that would be a default," said Ald. Robert Fioretti, whose 2nd Ward includes Willis.
The city's incentives were among several factors that resulted in the decision to run operations from Willis, said United spokeswoman Jean Medina, although the merged airline's largest hub will be in Houston.
"We made a commitment to the city of Chicago that we are not going to walk away from. Maintaining our headquarters and operations center here makes good business sense and creates opportunity for United, our people and the city," Medina said. "Chicago is ideally centrally located to support bicoastal hubs (and) has long been a transportation center for the United States, with a mayor who fully understands the benefits of a strong transportation infrastructure."
Contrary to rumors, United has not asked the city for more money to build out offices at Willis, Medina said. The space United ultimately occupies likely will be larger than it had planned. The carrier holds a lease for about 460,000 square feet and the option to take over several more floors if needed, real estate sources said.
Planning for the new airline, which will be named United, will begin in earnest next month. Details small and large must be worked out, from where its pilots will be trained to what uniforms they'll wear.
United, meanwhile, expects to start moving the first employees from its Elk Grove Township corporate campus into Willis in October.
But the staff shuffling among the merging carriers could stretch over years. United's flight dispatchers don't expect to move into the new center until the end of 2011, said Craig Symons, president of their union. Plowman doesn't expect his members to relocate to Chicago until 2012, when the two carriers hope to gain FAA certification to operate as a single carrier.
Although Willis eventually will house a variety of United workers, from computer specialists to its marketing and sales staff, its heart will be the new nerve center. United has mulled building a new operations center since fire tore through its Elk Grove facility a decade ago, and it relishes the chance to start from scratch at Willis, Dillman said.
The new center will be horseshoe-shaped, wrapped around an elevator bank that runs through the middle of the floor, and outfitted throughout with large screens. Borrowing from the city's 911 center, Dillman plans to use visual cues to keep all staffers, from crew schedulers to routers to customer support, focused on resolving the same problem, like guiding home aircraft that were diverted because of a storm at O'Hare.
"It's one thing to describe a situation; it's another thing to have everyone literally look at the same picture," Dillman said. "There's amazing value in that."
Symons said many of his colleagues are excited about working in the new center. They haven't seen a major equipment upgrade in years, and they're working cheek-to-jowl with load planners, mechanics and other staff who used to be based at airports. They also don't share a common communications system or work off the same computer platform.
But many workers worry about how they'll get downtown, especially for late-night shifts, and whether they'll be safe walking from the train to Willis at 3 a.m.
" Metra schedules are not conducive [to working odd hours], and parking is fantastically expensive down there," Symons said. "It's a tough move for almost everybody I represent."
Dillman said he is sympathetic to the upheaval workers will face and is exploring, along with frontline workers, ways to ease the commute. One group is mulling longer shift hours that would enable them to work four-day weeks, for example.
"It doesn't do us good if we have a state-of-the-art facility and don't address people's concerns," he said.
