Construction to start soon on Amazon distribution centers

Construction work could start as early as next week to prepare sites for two huge Amazon.com Inc. distribution centers in Chesterfield and Dinwiddie counties.

The online retail giant, which announced plans late Wednesday for the $135 million project that will employ a total of about 1,350 people, has a fast-track schedule to open the two 1 million-square-foot buildings by November.

"It is ambitious, and also very doable," said Tim Davey, senior principal with Timmons Group, a Richmond-based civil engineering firm that is handling site engineering for the projects.

The distribution centers are planned for Meadowville Technology Park adjacent to Interstate 295 just south of the James River in eastern Chesterfield, and for Dinwiddie Commerce Park at Interstate 85 and U.S. 460 in Dinwiddie.

"For the next 101/2 months, you are going to see two very large sites coming out of the ground, which is going to be very exciting," Davey said.

Each center, at 1 million square feet, will be slightly smaller than the 1.3 million-square-foot Short Pump Town Center in western Henrico County.

About 1,000 people will work at the Meadowville site, with about 350 at the Dinwiddie center.

Amazon did not respond to questions Thursday about the pay range for those workers, how many seasonal employees might be hired or other details about the centers.

Amazon spokesman Ty Rogers said in an email that the 1,350 announced jobs would be full time.

"As a way of finding high-quality permanent employees and to manage variation in customer demand, we also employ seasonal associates," he said. "There will be a range of jobs available, and applicants will be able to review the specific qualifications when we start hiring next year."

Rogers did not provide more specifics on when the company expects to start taking job applications.

Local economic development officials said the company plans to work through the Virginia Employment Commission to find job applicants.

"These really are local people that will work these jobs," said Renee Chapline, executive director of Virginia's Gateway Region, an economic development group that serves Dinwiddie, Chesterfield and six other counties and cities south of Richmond.

"It is not something that is so highly technical that a lot of outside outreach will need to happen to get the technical skills needed," she said. "It will be folks that live in the immediate areas that these opportunities will be available for."

Amazon needed two distribution centers here — one, in Chesterfield, to handle smaller items to be shipped to customers, and the other, in Dinwiddie, to handle larger merchandise.

Amazon is planning to invest $85 million in Chesterfield and $50 million in Dinwiddie.

The project is a boon to Dinwiddie, said Greg Reid, Dinwiddie's economic development director.

The Amazon center is the largest jobs announcement since Chaparral Steel Co. — now Gerdau Ameristeel Corp. — announced the opening of a $400 million, 400-employee mill in Dinwiddie in 1997, he said.

Amazon's center essentially will take up all of the available land in the 243-acre Dinwiddie Commerce Park, but there are several other parcels in the park along U.S. 460 that would be suitable for smaller commercial developments, Reid said.

Using economic development grant money drawn from Virginia's tobacco settlement payments, the county paid $160,000 to acquire 20 additional acres adjacent to the park from Norfolk Southern Corp. in November to accommodate Amazon's needs.

Amazon "will be the first, and they will be the biggest," company in the park, which was developed from farmland the county acquired in 2005, Reid said.

"We have had other (companies) that looked at it and some that had interest, but never to the point that we had somebody that was ready to sign on the dotted line until this opportunity came about," Reid said.

The Amazon investment, he said, "is a good deal for Dinwiddie County, and it will be for years to come."

Amazon has not chosen a site contractor yet but is moving quickly to do so, said Davey, of Timmons. The online retailer has retained Seefried Industrial Properties Inc., an Atlanta-based industrial property management firm, to oversee development of the sites.

The architect for the buildings is MacGregor Associates Architects, based in Atlanta, Davey said.

Consultants working for Amazon started looking for local sites for the distribution centers this year, officials said, and Virginia was in competition with several other states for the investment.

Seattle-based Amazon, which has 69 distribution centers globally, announced plans in October to build 17 new ones.

On Thursday, Amazon finalized its plans to open two distribution centers in Murfreesboro and Lebanon, Tenn., that are expected to create 1,300 jobs.

That announcement follows a deal the company reached with Tennessee earlier this year to expand its presence in the state, with the requirement that the company would start collecting Tennessee sales taxes in 2014. Amazon already has three facilities in Tennessee.