DEWITT -- Carrier Corporation, which once called the Syracuse area its corporate  home, is closing yet another piece of what had been a sprawling campus in DeWitt. The company announced today that it would be closing its TR-2 building which contains its warehouse for its HVAC parts business.  The company will be consolidating its parts warehouse in a facility in the state of Tennessee.  Ina news release the company said;  "In response to the continuing market downturn, Carrier Corp. intends to consolidate its warehouse operations and close its Syracuse HVAC parts warehouse (TR-2). With majority of HVAC parts business concentrated in southern U.S., this action is intended to improve customer service and reduce transportation costs. Also, Carrier intends to eliminate certain unprofitable warehouse activities."  The company says the move will eliminate the jobs of 170 local workers.   It expects to transition from the DeWitt warehouse to the facility in Tennessee later this year, and early next year.

Carrier still has more than a thousand jobs at its DeWitt facility in its research and development and engineering units. The company says that is the largest concentration of those types of jobs in any if its world-wide operations.. The company says its R & D unit will not be affected buy this decision.

At one time,  central New York and the Carrier Corporation were synonymous with each other.  The company had been headquartered in Syracuse for years. But in the late 1980's the company's headquarters was moved to Connecticut, home of parent corporation United Technologies.  Since the 1980's, a number of manufacturing units had been moved from Syracuse to other areas of the county or overseas. In 2004, the company announced it was ceasing all  remaining manufacturing at its DeWitt campus, that decision alone eliminated some 1,200 jobs.