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Kansas City Scores New National HQ

KANSAS CITY—Executives form Virgin Mobile USA were pleasantly surprised that the city's downtown provided the base of talent needed by the company.

By Brian J. Rogal | brianjrogal | | Updated on July 19, 2016

 

kc-UnionStaKCSkyline (2) Google chose the KC region for the 2011 rollout of its high speed fiber, and helped get a lot of attention from other tech executives.
KANSAS CITY—Cities across the Midwest are becoming incubators for tech-oriented companies, and Kansas City is no exception. Officials from Virgin Mobile USA said yesterday that they had decided to locate the Warren, NJ-based company’s new headquarters in the city’s downtown as it re-launches its brand under Sprint . Company officials expect to identify office space as soon as possible with occupancy expected by the end of 2016. They plan to hire a wide range of 50 positions by the end of this year. Roles range from career professional to executive roles across most disciplines, but primarily focused in marketing, customer experience delivery, and website design and management. “What made Kansas City stand out was the vitality of its technology and entrepreneurial communities,” Tim Cowden , president and chief executive officer of the Kansas City Area Development Council , tells GlobeSt.com. The council was part of an effort that helped Kansas City beat out several other metro areas and win the headquarters. Virgin needed to know whether the region had “a talent base to support the initial ramp-up of operations and then sustain it for the long-term,” he adds. These attractive qualities can surprise outsiders a bit. But Cowden points out that Google gave Kansas City a boost when in 2011 it chose to roll out its new high-speed fiber in the metro area. “That was a tremendous pivot point for the community. When you have a company with the brand penetration of Google, that gets the attention of a lot of tech executives.” As part of Richard Branson’s family of companies, Virgin Mobile brings considerable cachet as well. To bring in a firm like this, “speaks volumes about what Kansas City is and what it will become.”    Virgin officials did carefully consider several of the region’s suburbs, such as Overland Park in Johnson County, KS, which also has a tech cluster and plays a big role in office market, Cowden adds. But “they loved the energy and vibrancy downtown. Young talent is flocking to downtowns and central cores across the region.”

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