photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

Shovels await a groundbreaking ceremony for Panasonic's new battery plant in De Soto on Nov. 2, 2022.

Ever since Panasonic announced it was building a $4 billion, 4,000-job battery plant in nearby De Soto, people have been questioning who will fill all those jobs.

Now, maybe there is another question to ask about those jobs: Do they come with a battery charger?

It appears many of the jobs on the factory floor of the plant will work 12-hour shifts, usually with two days on and then two or three days off, according to information gleaned from a group of area leaders who recently took a trip to the Panasonic battery plant in the Reno, Nevada, area.

“It is probably a fairly taxing thing to be in that kind of clean environment for that long,” said Eudora Mayor Tim Reazin, who was part of the group that included a local economic development official, along with representatives of KU, K-State, the Kansas Department of Commerce and various Johnson County entities.

Taxing but not discouraging. Reazin said he left the plant impressed on many levels, and said he now has a better idea of the type of employees the De Soto facility is likely to attract.

“We talk about where are they going to get their employees from,” Reazin said of the question that area leaders have been asking. “A lot of folks we ended up talking with weren’t engineers or had that type of background. They were graduates who didn’t have any college and were working up through the plant. Everybody seemed to enjoy it, and it wasn’t like (Panasonic) put on anything special for us.”

Rob Richardson, the Douglas County Panasonic opportunities manager, said he thinks Panasonic will be a big recruiter of people right out of high school, in addition to forging relationships with universities for some of their higher tech jobs.

“There are going to be opportunities for educators to have partnerships with Panasonic for their students,” Richardson said.

Many of Panasonic’s factory positions are expected to pay $20 to $25 per hour, officials previously have said. The company is expected to be hiring at least 200 employees per month in 2024. The plant is expected to begin production of batteries for electric vehicles in the first quarter of 2025.

Here’s a look at other information that area leaders found on their visit, which took place in mid-July:

• Both Reazin and Richardson said they were impressed with how clean the Nevada plant was, which shares space with a Tesla manufacturing facility. Both said that the plant didn’t emit any type of smoke or odor, and had lots of evidence that recycling was a major emphasis for the entire facility.

“There were no odd smells, no chemical smells,” Reazin said. “It was clean, really clean.”

Reazin, who is a professional firefighter, said he also got information about how the facility works to prevent or respond to fires or other hazardous situations.

“I was really reassured that what they had there wasn’t going to be a large potential for problems for us or the community,” Reazin said.

• The Nevada plant is huge, and the De Soto one will be too, although it is being designed in a different configuration. Richardson said the group walked more than a mile on its tour, all the while staying inside the building.

• Richardson said he thinks recycling businesses could be a major type of industry that is drawn to the area due to the Panasonic plant. He toured a large recycling facility in the Reno area that is processing a variety of minerals used in the production of batteries. That plant is already employing 800 people, and currently has two 800,000-square-foot buildings under construction to keep up with demand for the recycled materials. State officials have projected that the Panasonic plant will produce an additional 4,000 jobs over and above the jobs provided at the battery plant. However, it hasn’t been clear what those type of jobs might be.

• The Nevada plant uses buses to transport about 30% of the plant’s employees to and from work. It is not clear if that will be the plan for the De Soto facility. The De Soto facility has better access to a major road network than what’s available at the Nevada facility.

However, there are questions about how much the road network around the De Soto plant will need to be improved, particularly Kansas Highway 10. Reazin said he has seen state plans that show the K-10 highway being expanded to six lanes. However, he said the plans he has seen show the expansion project stopping at Evening Star Road, which is just east of Eudora.

Reazin said he hopes state officials will consider making K-10 six lanes all the way to Lawrence. The Eudora mayor said he worries the state may not provide Douglas County enough infrastructure improvements to handle the traffic and growth that is likely to come. The plant site is in Johnson County, but it is just minutes away from Eudora and the Douglas County line.

“I worry that a third of the growth will be in Douglas County and west, and they aren’t putting the infrastructure in to support it,” Reazin said.

State officials have not announced any plans for an expanded K-10, although Gov. Laura Kelly in an interview with the Journal-World last month said she is aware of potential infrastructure plans for expansion of the K-10 corridor, but was not able to divulge details or provide a definitive timetable of future work.

photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

New home construction is shown in Eudora’s Shadow Ridge subdivision in this 2022 file photo.

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Reazin provided a few updates on potential development activity in Eudora, which currently is a community of about 6,000 people. He said large amounts of new housing construction, in anticipation of Panasonic growth, has not yet begun. However, he said there already are a couple of tracks of land — one near where Winchester Road passes over K-10 and another behind Eudora High School — that are either already in the hands of developers or are likely to be sold to developers in the near future.

Reazin said the city wants to work with developers on adding new housing stock to the community, but he said he doesn’t want to take the approach of pressuring large landowners in the community to sell.

The city is thinking big on some fronts. As we reported last month, the city is pursuing a STAR bond designation for a potential $50 million project that would include a 5,000-seat arena, apartments, retail and other commercial uses on property near the southeast corner of the Church Street and K-10 interchange.

Reazin said a recent meeting with Kansas Lt. Gov and Secretary of Commerce David Toland was encouraging. Reazin said the city is likely to proceed with the application process for the STAR bonds. The bonds, which require state approval, would allow the development to keep large amounts of sales and property taxes generated by the development to help pay for a portion of the project.