Solar company Sungevity selects Kansas City for expansion

A residential solar services company that expects to create nearly 600 jobs over the next five years will open a national sales and service center in January in downtown Kansas City.

The Kansas City Area Development Council plans to announce at its annual luncheon today that Sungevity Inc. has chosen Kansas City after a yearlong winnowing process that started with 50 cities.

Company officers said the vibrancy of downtown Kansas City, the professionalism of the people who pitched the city, the work ethic of the population and the annual big crop of graduates coming out of the area’s colleges and universities were big draws that sealed the deal.

Susan Hollingshead, Sungevity’s chief people and corporate services officer, said Thursday that the company was nearly ready to sign a lease and that it planned a “fun, techie business environment that Kansas City can show off to other companies interested in coming here.”

The company hopes to start here with about 50 employees.

Hollingshead said the company’s first expansion outside its Oakland, Calif., headquarters will be in Kansas City, partly because of its central U.S. location, which will help the company provide service to East Coast customers.

Downtown assets such as the Power & Light District and the coming streetcar line contributed to choosing downtown, she said, as did its central location in the metro area, allowing the company to draw employees from all parts of the metro.

The company operates in 11 states, the District of Columbia and the Netherlands and through a joint venture in Australia. It has grown from 30 employees to more than 600 in a little more than four years.

It is an exclusive residential solar partner with Lowe’s in the United States. In each market it works with contractors to install solar panels.

The Kansas City office, described as an “inside sales model that will handle inbound and outbound calls,” will offer “entry level, but career-type jobs,” officials said.

Hollingshead said the Kansas City jobs will be full time and pay about 20 percent higher than the average Jackson County wage rate. She said exact pay rates are not discussed until the interview stage.

Jobs will include sales and operations managers, trainers, solar sales consultants and design engineers to work with homeowners on designing and financing solar energy equipment and installation. The company will post its Kansas City job openings at www.sungevity.com/green-jobs.

It also is hiring through the University of Kansas, the University of Missouri-Kansas City and Metropolitan Community College on the university websites at career.ku.edu/sungevity and career.umkc.edu/sungevity.

The development council said officials from Missouri, Kansas City, Jackson County and area universities were assisted by KCP&L, Cassidy Turley, Hoefer Wysocki Architects, Polsinelli and the Full Employment Council in attracting Sungevity.

“This is the fourth company from the (San Francisco) Bay Area that we’ve recruited in the past year,” said development council senior vice president Tim Cowden.

The recruitments are helping to counter what had been an outflow of private industry jobs from downtown.

This story was originally published November 13, 2014 at 6:01 PM with the headline "Solar company Sungevity selects Kansas City for expansion."