Edgerton-Amazon Fulfillment Center

[zonk]

Boom! Brownbackistan reels it in.

Amazon to Open Fulfillment Center near Kansas City

Amazon to create 1,000 full-time positions at state-of-the-art Edgerton facility

SEATTLE—March 24, 2016—Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) today announced plans to open a state-of-the-art fulfillment center in Edgerton, Kansas. This facility will create approximately 1,000 full-time hourly positions, plus many managerial and support roles to support customer fulfillment. In Kansas, Amazon currently operates facilities in Lenexa.

“We’re excited to bring 1,000 great full-time jobs with benefits to the Kansas City region and proud to further invest in the state with this new fulfillment center,” said Akash Chauhan, Amazon’s vice president of North American operations. “We are grateful for the enthusiasm of our many state and local partners who have supported Amazon in bringing a new fulfillment center to Kansas. This has been a true team effort.”

Amazon employees at the 800,000-plus square-foot Edgerton fulfillment center will pick, pack and ship large items to customers such as big-screen televisions, sports equipment or kayaks, for example.

Full-time employees at Amazon receive competitive hourly wages and a comprehensive benefits package, including healthcare, 401(k) and company stock awards starting on day one, as well as generous maternity and paternity leave benefits.

Amazon also offers regular full-time employees innovative programs like Career Choice, where it will pre-pay up to 95 percent of tuition for courses related to in-demand fields, regardless of whether the skills are relevant to a career at Amazon. Since the program’s launch, employees are pursuing degrees in game design and visual communications, nursing, IT programming and radiology, to name a few.

Governor Sam Brownback said, “This is good news for Kansas. In addition to creating 1,000 jobs, Amazon is investing in our state, workforce and the community. The quality of the Kansas workforce and our central location in the heart of the nation contributed to their decision to locate in Logistics Park Kansas City.”

“The City of Edgerton is pleased that Amazon has chosen a site at Logistics Park Kansas City,” said Edgerton Mayor Donald Roberts. "Amazon's innovative new facility and quality job creation supports and validates the City's continued efforts of creating global routes with local roots. We look forward to having Amazon as a community partner in Edgerton for years to come.”

Greg Martinette, of Southwest Johnson County Economic Development Corp. said, "Our residents along with our central location, squarely in the middle of the country, have given us this opportunity to partner with one of America’s best corporations. Most importantly, Amazon will create good career and job opportunities for our residents.”

This project is a joint effort of the following partner organizations: Kansas Department of Commerce, Kansas Department of Transportation, BNSF, NorthPoint Development, KCP&L, City of Edgerton, Southwest Johnson County Economic Development Corporation.

To learn more about working at an Amazon fulfillment center, visit www.workatamazonfulfillment.com.

[earthling]

Lenexa site is already a fulfillment center, this sounds like a move/expansion to a larger facility.
http://www.amazonfulfillmentcareers.com ... locations/

I wonder if this could mean same day delivery coming to KC.

[earthling]

BizJournal article...
http://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/n ... erton.html

Says Lenexa center is 267K sq/ft, new location will be over 800K sq/ft.

[joshmv]

If you're ever down in that area, go check it out. The huge scale of the BNSF intermodal facility is pretty awesome.

[mean]

Not to put too much rain on the parade here, but these jobs mostly don't pay well and many appear to be excellent candidates for automation. The article doesn't appear to mention, but I'm curious what kinds of incentives they may have gotten.

[loftguy]

Hmmm.

Downtown KC hasn't had a decent fulfillment center since Annie Chambers closed shop...

[joshmv]

Not to put too much rain on the parade here, but these jobs mostly don't pay well and many appear to be excellent candidates for automation. The article doesn't appear to mention, but I'm curious what kinds of incentives they may have gotten.

Much of it already is automated. I sell on Amazon full time now so I know how these fulfillment warehouses work pretty well.

- People like me ship in hundreds or thousands of products at a time, and people have to be there to receive them. There's really no way to automate that because they make sure that you've followed all of the packaging and labeling requirements as they go. Everybody packs/ships things differently, and everything is commingled when it comes in.

- When something is ordered, normally a robot goes to pick up the bin and brings it to the person that's actually packing the box. I don't think they'll get to the point of robots doing the final packaging.

- It mentions quite a few managerial and support jobs will be in the facility.

Right now they can't build these facilities fast enough. They aren't fun or fulfilling jobs for the most part, but I'm sure they won't have trouble finding people.

[earthling]

Not to put too much rain on the parade here, but these jobs mostly don't pay well and many appear to be excellent candidates for automation. The article doesn't appear to mention, but I'm curious what kinds of incentives they may have gotten.

Yeah, this article is a bit old but says Amazon fulfillment centers pay less than avg warehouse workers, more than avg retail workers. Walmart warehouse workers earn above avg, at least a few years ago...

http://money.cnn.com/2013/07/30/news/co ... e-workers/

[grovester]

Hmmm.

Downtown KC hasn't had a decent fulfillment center since Annie Chambers closed shop...

That's been automated as well.

[brewcrew1000]

I think this warehouse ships big ticket items like TVs and kayaks so if it's sold to someone in Missouri Kansas won't get any kind of taxes from it and I doubt a lot of people in ks are buying kayaks. It kind of sucks to have a Amazon in your state cause u have to pay taxes.

[joshmv]

I think this warehouse ships big ticket items like TVs and kayaks so if it's sold to someone in Missouri Kansas won't get any kind of taxes from it and I doubt a lot of people in ks are buying kayaks. It kind of sucks to have a Amazon in your state cause u have to pay taxes.

You've got it partly correct. The fact that they have a location in Kansas means that if someone in Kansas does buy a kayak, or anything else, it doesn't matter where it comes from. Amazon would still collect the sales tax and give it to Kansas. The only thing that matters is where it's being shipped and whether Amazon is required to collect sales tax in that state.

When Amazon collects sales tax in your state, it's important to look at the 3rd party sellers because many times they'll be selling for the same price as Amazon but they usually don't collect sales tax.

[DaveKCMO]

closed in coffeyville (my hometown) one year, opened in edgerton the next. how will all of these low-wage workers get to edgerton?

[brewcrew1000]

closed in coffeyville (my hometown) one year, opened in edgerton the next. how will all of these low-wage workers get to edgerton?

The average amazon warehouse salary is like 11 bucks an hour. Wonder if people would be excited if a huge walmart or some huge mcdonalds came and it employed 1000 people

[Highlander]

closed in coffeyville (my hometown) one year, opened in edgerton the next. how will all of these low-wage workers get to edgerton?

The average amazon warehouse salary is like 11 bucks an hour. Wonder if people would be excited if a huge walmart or some huge mcdonalds came and it employed 1000 people

I suspect this won't stop Brownback from crowing about it as a huge achievement and confirmation of his economic plan for Kansas.

[joshmv]

http://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/n ... enter.html

Depending on how business shakes out for the center, it ultimately will employ 1,500 to 2,000 people, Edgerton City Administrator Beth Linn said Friday.

according to Glassdoor Inc., an online job information firm, the typical Amazon.com fulfillment associate makes $10 to $14 an hour, for an average of $12 an hour. Glassdoor, which based the Amazon.com data on 265 salary reports provided by employees, added that an Amazon fulfillment associate can expect to make an average of $24,904 a year after bonuses and additional compensation are factored in.

Linn said her understanding was that the fulfillment associate positions in Edgerton would pay closer to $30,000 a year.

Linn said she expects Amazon to begin staffing the building in early July

At 822,104 square feet, the building that Amazon will occupy is the largest industrial facility ever built on spec in the Kansas City area. But it won't hold that distinction for long.

On Thursday, the Edgerton City Council approved resolutions of intent to issue industrial revenue bonds for NorthPoint's ninth and 10th buildings in LPKC, both of them to be specs, Linn said. Located just west of the new Amazon facility, the new buildings will cover 765,000 square feet and 926,000 square feet.

[brewcrew1000]

I think its very risky for northpoint to just build spec buildings, I could see some just closing up in the next few years, jet.com occupies one, who knows if that company even survives in 2 years

[earthling]

Ah yeah, forgot jet.com has a fulfillment center there. Looks like only one in central US...
https://jet.com/about-us/working-at-jet/jobs

They apparently pay warehouse workers even less than Amazon...
http://www.kansascity.com/news/business ... 43080.html

[FangKC]

Brownback may crow about adding these jobs, but they are mostly low-wage jobs. Look across the border at Cerner adding 16,000 high-paying software jobs at Bannister. Gov. Nixon has more to crow about.

[kboish]

closed in coffeyville (my hometown) one year, opened in edgerton the next. how will all of these low-wage workers get to edgerton?

Do you know if the coffeyville plant that closed originally received incentives?

[grovester]

http://www.kansas.com/news/business/rea ... 11676.html

"The company sought $20 million in industrial revenue bonds for the building expansion, and an incentive package worth about $4.5 million – $350,000 for up to 10 years if the company met employment goals and about $1 million toward improving access roads, water and sewer lines and other infrastructure improvements.

The state offered a $500,000 loan that would be forgiven if the company hit its employment goals. The state also awarded other incentives to Amazon under its IMPACT program, but the details of that award were unavailable Wednesday.

The incentives for Amazon expired after 10 years"