LISLE, IL-Navistar Inc., the maker of trucks, engines, buses and recreational vehicles, announced Wednesday that it plans to invest $110 million in the purchase and redevelopment of the 1.2-million-square-foot former Alcatel-Lucent office complex at 2601 Lucent Ln. The move will create a new world headquarters for the company, moving executive management, business operations and product development to the 85-acre property.

The company started about 18 months ago looking to move out of its current Warrenville, IL location, according to their broker Jones Lang LaSalle. About six miles east along Interstate 88, Alcatel-Lucent put its campus on the market, after consolidations left the firm occupying only about 85,000 square feet at the property.

A Navistar spokesman tells GlobeSt.com that the company quickly saw the Lisle property as fitting every need. “We realized that at that facility we could create a more integrated organization, at an extremely attractive price,” he says. The firm is buying the site for about $34 million, with the rest of the investment to be used to upgrade parts of the 30-year-old facilities, as well as the construction of about 25,000 square feet of new offices.

There had been some snags along the way. Following legal challenges, the company had backed away from the site, and considered moving out of Illinois, but state and local politicians came in to smooth the deal. Gov. Pat Quinn’s administration committed to an investment package of nearly $65 million. “We tailored a targeted investment package to meet the company’s needs and keep thousands of people working,” Quinn said at a news conference Wednesday.

The spokesman says the firm had planned on even more additions to the Lisle property, including a truck testing facility, but after the controversy decided to instead move its testing facilities to another location, such as its Melrose Park facilities. This separate move will take an investment of another $80 million, he says. Finally, a location for a $15 million new parts facility has also not yet been decided, he says. Altogether, about 3,000 jobs will be retained or created by the moves, the spokesman says.

The move is pulling people from a few offices throughout the state, including the company’s current corporate site in 250,000 square feet in Warrenville. That property will be subleased once the move is complete, the spokesman says.