The letters of support Galesburg officials have been collecting for the past three weeks to send to Caterpillar Inc. and urge the corporation to locate here weren't even placed in the mail before Cat officials decided that Illinois was not the destination for its new manufacturing plant.

Mayor Sal Garza said Wednesday that city staff were caught "off-guard" by the timing of Caterpillar's leaked announcement to forgo Illinois entirely and locate the plant close to its divisional headquarters in Cary, N.C. But he said Cat officials did make a courtesy call to the city Tuesday night to thank Galesburg for its interest in the plant. The officials told the city its efforts were both "assertive and progressive," Garza said.

"We knew this was a very long shot from the very beginning," Garza said, adding, "We wouldn't change anything. Quite frankly, I'm very proud of the effort the Galesburg team put forward on this, and we were highly complimented by the Caterpillar corporation for it."

Starting in late December, Galesburg officials embarked on a strategy to lure Caterpillar's new North American plant, and its 1,000 jobs, to a city that has been longing for a major manufacturer since Maytag closed its doors.

Publicly, the strategy involved generating regional enthusiasm for Galesburg that included buying a $3,600 full page ad in last Sunday's Peoria Journal Star to promote Galesburg to the Caterpillar officials who are headquartered there. Privately, city officials spent time discussing and planning for the aggressive marketing of Galesburg, according to email exchanges obtained by The Register-Mail through state sunshine laws.

The emails, however, do not reveal any contact with Caterpillar officials or any discussion between city officials about arranging meetings with Cat officials. Before Tuesday's news went viral, Garza said in an interview that it is "atypical" for a major corporation, like Caterpillar, not to reach out to prospective cities before a project announcement is made.

"We don't get on the phone with the CEO on a daily basis and say 'Hey, how's it going,' " Garza said before Caterpillar's decision. "It really comes back to they're the ones that are driving this process. All we are attempting to do is continue to position the Galesburg area in a very positive light, so we continue to be a part of their internal discussion."

To attempt that, Galesburg officials strategized for a marketing campaign that targeted Caterpillar but also aimed to generate national publicity for the city.

A Jan. 15 email reveals that officials were considering running an ad in the Wall Street Journal's Midwest edition to coincide with the Peoria ad that would mean "more exposure" and a targeted business audience. Gary Camarano, the city's global strategies director, articulated the idea, with Garza wanting to explore the costs.

City officials also met in late January with officials from Pollina Corporate Real Estate, a firm based in Park Ridge, that helped a Caterpillar division in Germany relocate to the United States, according to a Jan. 19 email. Garza said the meeting was a courtesy and no public money was spent to bring the real estate officials to Galesburg.

"It was an open discussion ... to pick their brain to see if we were missing any viable strategies," Garza said in the Tuesday interview. "To date that hasn't materialized. Everything that we are doing is what had been recommended."

Another prong of the city's marketing strategy, the letters of support, was an early effort to generate regional support and publicity for Galesburg. To date, city officials have yet to reveal a formal tally of letters collected.

As of late January, city officials disclosed in email exchanges they had received only 15 letters of about 63 distributed to organizations across Knox, Mercer, Henderson, Warren and Henry counties. Since then, the city has had an "80 to 85 percent" total response rate to its requests for supportive letters, Garza said.

"Our goal was to make sure we were speaking as one, but we were representing this west-central region," he said.

But Galesburg officials weren't able to send the letters to Caterpillar after the company told Peoria County officials that it would not locate the plant in Illinois, largely because of the state's unstable business climate. Garza and city personnel were planning to send the letters later this week.

But the mayor said the effort to recruit Caterpillar was not wasted. The courtesy call, the compliments and the strategy exposed Galesburg and established a relationship with a prospering, multinational corporation, Garza said.