The building was a new-build despite the rather large inventory of existing plants Solyndra could have shopped.
No word on where the Solyndra robots that played "Whistle while you work" ended up.
From the
See correction at end of article.If you needed any proof that the region's solar industry was well past the Solyndra failure, head 2 miles south of the Tesla Motors Inc. plant in Fremont on I-880.
Ever since the world's most famous solar-panel startup went bust in 2011, the two prominent buildings at 47700 Kato Road — the ones with the cheerful blue angles and dark glass walls — have stood vacant.
Well, not for long....MUCH MORE
The new tenant? San Mateo-based SolarCity Corp., which has quietly leased the roughly 200,000 square feet, two-building facility.
The lease, which has not been previously reported, facilitates a new R&D center and headquarters for Silevo — the Fremont-based startup that SolarCity acquired last year to gain its own panel-manufacturing muscle for the first time. Contractors with Level 10 Construction were already at work building out the space this week.
"The reality is, we probably opened 20 or 30 new locations last year, and we hire 300-400 people a month," SolarCity spokesman Jonathan Bass told me. "In this particular case, the Silevo team is growing and need a larger space. We looked at a number of different buildings, this was available and suits our needs."
The expansion is significant for publicly traded SolarCity, the nation's largest solar company that sells, installs and leases solar systems. SolarCity is spending big bucks on Silevo's manufacturing capability. That includes a massive plant under construction in Buffalo, New York, a potentially risky and capital-intense strategy to drive down the cost of panels and boost their efficiency. A large new R&D center in Fremont shows SolarCity is scaling up all aspects of the division. (The company reports its fourth-quarter earnings Feb. 18.)...
