Amazon Reportedly Building Multistory Distribution Centers All Over The Country
True to form, Amazon is at the forefront of a new era of logistics.
The e-commerce giant and most valuable brand in the world is working on opening several multistory distribution centers in the U.S., according to several reports. Though no centers have been publicly confirmed as meant for Amazon, reporting across the country has connected the tech company to four nearly identical plans, each for a four-story warehouse totaling around 2.5M SF.
In the Milwaukee suburb of Oak Creek, Wisconsin, plans have been approved for one such distribution center on a 75-acre site in Ryan Road Business Park, which will also contain 47.2K SF of office space, the Milwaukee Business Journal reports. That facility, code-named Project Arrow until Amazon is announced as a tenant, will be developed by Hillwood Development. Hillwood is also the developer for the same sort of center in the Raleigh-area town of Garner, North Carolina, the News-Observer reports.
Amazon purchased a 64-acre plot in Landings Logistics Center in Bakersfield, California, through an LLC, and Kern County Administrative Officer Ryan Alsop confirmed that its planning a 2.5M SF center there as well, Bakersfield.com reports. The Minneapolis-area town of Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, is getting a center of the same size, but no such confirmation has been given for the plan code-named Project Hotdish. The Minneapolis Business Journal reports that Amazon will be occupying that facility, which will be developed by Indianapolis-based Scannell Properties.
All four centers will employ between 1,000 and 2,000 people, and at least the Oak Creek and Garner facilities have received government subsidies for those jobs. In Garner, Amazon will immediately become the town's biggest employer, surpassing the local school district that employs 800 people.
Modern distribution centers tend to require such high clearances and so much truck activity that multistory buildings have not made financial sense in the past, but in urban areas like Atlanta and New York where space is so tough to come by and access to the population center is so important, developers have started to make it work.
Amazon's centers seem to be of a different sort, located as they are in suburban areas. The square footage and height are both greater than what has already been in the pipeline, in keeping with Amazon's seemingly unending quest to be the world's biggest force in retail and logistics.
