Solar company bringing 1,000 jobs to Riverside

Aug 16 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Jack Katzanek The Press-Enterprise, Riverside, Calif.

A company that markets solar panels and has a very bullish outlook about the future demand for its products is relocating its operations to a historic but long-abandoned Riverside building and hopes to employ as many as 1,000 people there, a spokesman said Wednesday, Aug. 15.

SolarMax Technology is remodeling the old Food Machinery Corp. building adjacent to the Metrolink station near downtown Riverside. The company will bring its corporate headquarters, including full sales and office staffs, employees who arrange customer financing and some distribution personnel, to the location by the end of the year.

Also, installation crews putting up solar panels on rooftops all over Southern California will work out of the Riverside headquarters, said Guillermo Santomauro, SolarMax's sales manager.

The company, which was started in 2008, has its American headquarters in the City of Industry. It is moving to a 165,000-square-foot building on Twelfth Street in has purchased in Riverside.

The building once housed the Food Machinery Corp. factory and also made amphibious tanks used in World War II.

The structure has been vacant for more than 30 years.

SolarMax targeted Riverside because it believes this is a strong market for residential sales of solar equipment. Santomauro added that a lot of green technology is already in play in Riverside and the surrounding area.

Even the parking meters are solar-powered, he said.

"Part of the move is location," Santomauro said. "Riverside is a great market, and it's only going to get better."

The company has only a handful of sales locations in Southern California, including storefronts in Norco and Temecula. But it plans to add as many as 20 retail additional retail locations, using the showrooms as demonstration points to attract residential buyers.

The stores will be as far north as Santa Barbara and as far south as San Diego. Each would employ between 10 and 20 people.

Southern California has more peak sunlight harvesting hours than the rest of the state, but Santomauro said the company plans to expand to other parts of the state in 2013.

Santomauro said the typical homeowner who installed solar panels used to be a person with extra cash who paid the entire cost up front.

That has changed, he said, and his company is taking advantage of that by developing financing deals that allow the customer to take leverage rebates and tax incentives offered by governments and utilities.

"Our vision is to make solar a product that is on any homeowner's check list," he said.

SolarMax last year merged with Solar Engineering, a Pasadena-based firm that specialized in the engineering aspects of solar generation but needed some help on the sales and marketing sides. The panels are built in the United States, China, Malaysia and Mexico, Santomauro said.

People who watch the Inland economy have said that one of the ways to recovery is to take advantage of new technologies, and SolarMax's expansion is seen as a move in that direction.

"I think that when we look at renewable energy and renewable energy jobs, certainly solar power is a big part of the future," said Paul Granillo, president and CEO of the Inland Empire Economic Partnership. "And, 1,000 jobs is a substantial step forward."