CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – The bankrupt owner of three auto-parts plants in Rantoul insists it’s still negotiating with a potential buyer for the sites, despite a letter to town leaders that indicates the facilities will close.

City leaders say executives at Michigan-based Collins & Aikman Corp. haven’t returned their calls, so they have no choice but to believe the letter.

The letter, dated July 3 and signed by Human Resources Vice President Mark Leyda, said that a potential deal to sell plants to Cadence Innovation LLC hasn’t been finalized. That has led some customers to take their business elsewhere, he wrote.

“The plant will ultimately need to cease production,” Leyda wrote, adding that layoffs would continue through July 20. “The plant closings and layoffs will be permanent.”

Collins & Aikman spokesman David Youngman said Thursday that the letter was intended to meet federal requirements that companies to give advance notice of possible job losses. The company already laid off 45 people because some customers stopped using Collins & Aikman, he said.

“We continue to be engaged in negotiations with Cadence in support of the sale,” Youngman said.

Rantoul Village Administrator David Johnston, who received the letter, said he believes that about 500 jobs, and one of the city’s biggest employers, soon will be gone. Collins & Aikman told its Rantoul employees – more than 700 at the time – in April that the plants could close. Johnston and others saw that notice, though, as a sign the plants were about to be sold to a buyer who might lay off some workers.

Cadence and Collins & Aikman later in April announced a tentative $68 million deal for the plants and six others, all part of Collins & Aikman’s plastics business.

But in June, the companies reopened negotiations over unspecified snags.

Youngman said they have continued to talk almost daily. The sale, however, is complicated because Collins & Aikman is bankrupt, he said, meaning any deal must satisfy creditors and a judge.

Teamsters representative Patrick Gleason, whose union represents most of the plant’s workers, said his initial reaction to the letter was much like Johnston’s. But after speaking to union lawyers and Collins & Aikman, “We’re still optimistic those negotiations will still go through,” Gleason said.

State Department of Commerce workers already are at the plants, Johnston said, helping workers laid off earlier this year sign up for unemployment and find work.

Johnston said he told one about this week’s letter.

“She said, ‘I guess we’ll be here a little longer’.”