Only about 24 people hired at Brevini Wind, not 450 announced two years ago

MUNCIE -- More than two years after state and local officials gathered along Interstate 69 to announce 450 jobs would be created at the Brevini Wind gearbox factory, the jobs-starved Muncie community is still waiting for the wide-scale hiring to begin.

As he conducted a tour of Brevini's new facility -- where a $2.8-million lathe is cutting gears but only about two dozen people have been hired -- project director Greg Winkler acknowledged that the public must be wondering what's taking so long.

"It just takes forever," Winkler said.

As an example of how long it can take to establish a manufacturing facility in a newly-built, 130,000-square-foot building, Winkler pointed to that same vertical turning lathe.