Metro KC to Complete Trifecta of Amazon Fulfillment Centers
With the new 855,000-square-foot facility in Wyandotte County, the e-commerce giant is bringing another 1,000 jobs to Kansas City.
By Scott Baltic, Contributing Editor
The site of Amazon’s third fulfillment center in the K.C. area
Kansas City, Kan.—Seemingly just in time for its second annual Prime Day shopping event, Amazon announced that it would be adding its third distribution center in the Kansas City metro area. This latest building will be an 855,000-square-foot build-to-suit fulfillment center sitting on a 134-acre site in Wyandotte County. The facility will ultimately employ more than 1,000, according to the retail juggernaut.
The news followed the announcement in May that the e-commerce giant would be taking a spec building (still under construction) at Logistics Park Kansas City in Edgerton, at 822,100 square feet reportedly the largest spec industrial building ever constructed in metro K.C.
Amazon already operates a 267,000-square-foot fulfillment center at Lenexa Logistics Center.
The latest facility will be built on land previously owned by NorthPoint Development near the southwest side of I-70 and the Turner Diagonal freeway. The project’s developers include Cushman & Wakefield, Seefried Industrial Properties and USAA.
In addition to Amazon, the Kansas City area has in the last three years attracted e-commerce companies S&S Active Wear, FoodServiceWarehouse.com, ReallyGoodStuff.com and Jet.com. Altogether, these companies will occupy more than 4 million square feet, according to the announcement.
“In addition to our market’s competitive location and cost advantages, supply chain companies are drawn to our wealth of speculative development space,” Chris Gutierrez, president of industry group KC SmartPort, said in a prepared statement. “More than 5.8 million square feet of speculative industrial space hit the market in 2015, and currently 6.3 million square feet of spec space is under construction.”
The K.C. industrial market totals about 225 million square feet, and the current vacancy rate is about 7.5 percent, a Kansas City Area Development Council spokesperson told Commercial Property Executive, citing data from Cushman & Wakefield Kansas City. Since about 2012, annual new construction and absorption have both typically been about 4 million to 5 million square feet. Net absorption through the second quarter of 2016 has been about 2.5 million square feet.
Image courtesy of NorthPoint Development
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