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It has been confirmed by Bernalillo County officials that Amazon is building a fulfillment center in Albuquerque at I-40 and Atrisco Vista Boulevard near the existing Tempur-Pedic manufacturing facility and FedEx Freight facility. It began construction in March and is expected to open by the end of next year. It will employ 1,000 workers. It is reported to be only 465,000 sq ft, which I believe is in error. It's likely that figure is the size of the building's footprint, not the actual building size. Regardless, this is great news, and I'm sure we will get better info and more firm details as time goes by.
If this is a Sortable fulfillment center (which I presume it will most likely be), I'm guessing it will be one of the new style Amazon Robotics fulfillment centers. The one in Tucson is of that type.
I looked on Bernalillo County's website and found the building permit details for the Amazon fulfillment center in Albuquerque. It confirms that the building will be 5 floors. The building will be located at 12945 Comfort Way NW and is being built under the code name of "Project Chico" which is a hallmark of the secretive Amazon fulfillment center projects.
If the building is only 465,000 sq ft, as was reported, then that means it would have a footprint less than 100,000 sq ft (93,000 sq ft), which is 1/3rd smaller than a Walmart Supercenter and smaller than the size of a Home Depot as well. Looking again at the rendering which was posted to Twitter earlier this year and I don't believe it depicts a building with only a 100,000 sq ft footprint:
I really do believe the 465,000 sq ft figure is the size of the building footprint. Times that by five levels and you get 2,325,000 sq ft, which is close enough to the original rumored size. When looking at the rendering you see that the ground floor has an entrance area and at least one other 'bump out' on the side which do not rise the full five floors. Allowing for that difference in the top 4 floorplates then I'd estimate that the buiding is just slightly smaller than 2.3 million square feet.
That size is in the ballpark of the fulfillment center under construction in Spokane that has 2.6 million sq ft and is gearing up to open. The Spokane fulfillment center will have 1,500 employees, so perhaps that is more like what Albuquerque will have.
This is absolutely a huge project and major win for Albuquerque. We needed to make sure we got one of these fulfillment centers here and did not continue to be served by ones in other cities, and to make sure we made up for and got back the jobs lost here in the national retail shift.
These are the jobs that are replacing and will make up for the loss of retail jobs due to the shift in where people buy stuff. This will help make up for the jobs lost at places like Kmart, Sears and Macy's that have closed locations in Albuquerque over the last six years. Each of those locations employed about 150-200 people. This would make up for the 3 Kmarts, 2 Sears and 1 Macy's that have closed in the last six years in Albuquerque.
The important thing is to have these jobs in Albuquerque and not someplace else. Every city of considerable size or which is a regional center for a large area will eventually have one. Right now and within the last couple of years places like Tucson, El Paso, Colorado Springs, Boise and Spokane have completed, are building or are planning a fulfillment center just like this. Like always, they started out in larger cities and major markets and are now working their way down to smaller cities and middle markets.
This fulfillment center in Albuquerque will probably serve and have the same coverage area of our media matket, which is most of New Mexico and parts of Arizona and Colorado. El Paso will also soon start work on a fulfillment center and that would take care of Las Cruces and much of southern New Mexico, I'm sure. But northern New Mexico, northeastern Arizona, southwestern Colorado, and perhaps even extending into the panhandle of Texas and southeastern Utah, will be served by this fulfillment center in Albuquerque.
That's what's really good about this project, to keep Albuquerque as the center of distribution for these areas and have these jobs here.
I looked on Bernalillo County's website and found the building permit details for the Amazon fulfillment center in Albuquerque. It confirms that the building will be 5 floors. The building will be located at 12945 Comfort Way NW and is being built under the code name of "Project Chico" which is a hallmark of the secretive Amazon fulfillment center projects.
If the building is only 465,000 sq ft, as was reported, then that means it would have a footprint less than 100,000 sq ft (93,000 sq ft), which is 1/3rd smaller than a Walmart Supercenter and smaller than the size of a Home Depot as well. Looking again at the rendering which was posted to Twitter earlier this year and I don't believe it depicts a building with only a 100,000 sq ft footprint:
I really do believe the 465,000 sq ft figure is the size of the building footprint. Times that by five levels and you get 2,325,000 sq ft, which is close enough to the original rumored size. When looking at the rendering you see that the ground floor has an entrance area and at least one other 'bump out' on the side which do not rise the full five floors. Allowing for that difference in the top 4 floorplates then I'd estimate that the buiding is just slightly smaller than 2.3 million square feet.
That size is in the ballpark of the fulfillment center under construction in Spokane that has 2.6 million sq ft and is gearing up to open. The Spokane fulfillment center will have 1,500 employees, so perhaps that is more like what Albuquerque will have.
This is absolutely a huge project and major win for Albuquerque. We needed to make sure we got one of these fulfillment centers here and did not continue to be served by ones in other cities, and to make sure we made up for and got back the jobs lost here in the national retail shift.
These are the jobs that are replacing and will make up for the loss of retail jobs due to the shift in where people buy stuff. This will help make up for the jobs lost at places like Kmart, Sears and Macy's that have closed locations in Albuquerque over the last six years. Each of those locations employed about 150-200 people. This would make up for the 3 Kmarts, 2 Sears and 1 Macy's that have closed in the last six years in Albuquerque.
The important thing is to have these jobs in Albuquerque and not someplace else. Every city of considerable size or which is a regional center for a large area will eventually have one. Right now and within the last couple of years places like Tucson, El Paso, Colorado Springs, Boise and Spokane have completed, are building or are planning a fulfillment center just like this. Like always, they started out in larger cities and major markets and are now working their way down to smaller cities and middle markets.
This fulfillment center in Albuquerque will probably serve and have the same coverage area of our media matket, which is most of New Mexico and parts of Arizona and Colorado. El Paso will also soon start work on a fulfillment center and that would take care of Las Cruces and much of southern New Mexico, I'm sure. But northern New Mexico, northeastern Arizona, southwestern Colorado, and perhaps even extending into the panhandle of Texas and southeastern Utah, will be served by this fulfillment center in Albuquerque.
That's what's really good about this project, to keep Albuquerque as the center of distribution for these areas and have these jobs here.
This fulfillment center can serve as a backup for most of Arizona as well. Lately I have been getting a lot from Tucson (even though I live in the Phoenix area), and I still get quite a bit from the Inland Empire and Las Vegas (these are usually the default fallback areas if items are not available in Phoenix or Tucson). Albuquerque will likely be another option for one-day shipping by ground to the Phoenix area using Amazon's own logistics network.
Still, this means Albuquerque can be less dependent on Phoenix, Tucson, Denver, and DFW for Amazon packages.
I actually wonder if the Albuquerque FC will be a Sortable and El Paso will be Non-Sortable, or vice-versa. Sortable handles small to medium sized items, while Non-Sortable handles bulky items and items with irregular dimensions. That could keep different item types in close range of each other.
Aerial drone video of the Amazon fulfillment center under construction in Albuquerque. The project is being built just north of the massive Tempur-Pedic manufacturing facility. This will help to gauge the size of the Amazon facility as it moves along. The Tempur-Pedic facility has a footprint of 740,000 sq ft, with an interior partial mezzanine level that brings it up to 800,000 sq ft.
That Vimeo account also has older videos chronicling the fulfillment center construction in Albuquerque going back to March when it first started construction. The videos are pretty much weekly. This is especially awesome to see, because it looks like they will regularly chronicle the construction with aerial drone footage!
The very first video from March when the project got started:
Looks like the square footage given in the initial report might in fact be the building's footprint, and the actual usable square footage of the fulfillment center might in fact be around 2.58 million square feet: https://techbox.co.za/amazon-going-b...erque-journal/
Yes, I was sure the 465,000 sq ft was just the building's footprint. Amazon's multilevel fulfillment centers are absolutely huge!
The ones in Des Moines and Spokane are both about 2.6 million sq ft on multiple levels. I knew that Albuquerque's was no different. The estimated cost is spot on with those other fulfillment centers as well, $190 million. Another thing is that these other centers are hiring 1,500 people to staff them. I'm sure that also is what Albuquerque's fulfillment center will employ.
Bernalillo County in its press release actually gave an estimate of 1,000-1,500 jobs bring created. These centers usually ramp up to 3,000 workers during the holidays.
Below is the latest aerial drone video posted yesterday of the Albuquerque Amazon fulfillment center under construction, with the concrete foundation and footings getting laid and poured into place.
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