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Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, plans to build a “last-mile” distribution warehouse near the Humboldt County Airport in McKinleyville, a company spokesperson confirmed to the Outpost on Thursday. 

This thing will actually be fairly small, by Amazon standards. Planning documents describe a single-story commercial warehouse of 40,290 square feet, which might sound impressive until you consider that the company’s large fulfillment centers average around 20 times that size (800,000 square feet) and some mega-sites exceed 4 million square feet. (An acre is 43,560 square feet.)

Even Amazon’s other rural-focused delivery stations are typically larger. One being built in Redmond, Ore., for example, will be 83,559 square feet. Amazon considers 150,000 square feet to be “medium-sized” while “small facilities” are 60,000 square feet or less.

Here’s the sum total of what the mega-retailer was willing to say publicly in response to a list of questions:

“Amazon [plans] to open a delivery station in Humboldt County to better serve customers in the region,” company spokesperson Natalie Banke wrote in a prepared statement. “We’re early in the process and will share more details as plans progress.”

Fortunately, more details are already available in planning documents and emails, some of which were first reported by Lisa Music of Redheaded Blackbelt. (Like her, the Outpost obtained the documents via a Public Records Act request to Humboldt County.)

The warehouse and a parking lot will be located at 3110 Boeing Avenue, adjacent to the 101 offramp to Airport Road. Plans indicate a separate lot for fleet vans and employee parking located just south of the federal courthouse.

Here’s a map of the location, with the upper perimeter (outlined in red) showing the location of the warehouse and northern parking lot while the lower perimeter shows the location of the southern parking lot:

And there’s more! Below is a site plan for the warehouse and northern lot. Loading docks are slated for the southern edge of the building. A pair of new stormwater ponds, each approximately 0.2-acres big, will be constructed east and southeast of the warehouse, and a third pond (about 0.3 acres) will be built near the southern parking lot.

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In all, there are six parcels incorporated into these plans, with a total project size of about 9.4 acres. Line-haul delivery trucks will access the warehouse via a driveway on Boeing Avenue, according to a project description prepared by the development company Panattoni. 

“Delivery stations like this one power the ‘last mile’ of [Amazon’s] order process and help speed up deliveries,” Panattoni Senior Development Manager Sonya Kinz explains in a project description prepared for the county. “Packages are shipped to a delivery station from [Amazon’s] nearby fulfillment and sortation centers, loaded into delivery vehicles and delivered to customers.”

How many jobs will be created by this project? According to this project description, 115 employees are expected to be onsite daily during off-peak periods with up to 172 during seasonal spikes. 

Site operations will occur 24 hours a day, with the bulk of employee vehicle trips taking place between 7-9:30 a.m. and 7-8:30 p.m. Line-haul truck trips will mainly occur overnight, between 9:30 p.m.-5:30 a.m., according to the project description.

But it won’t just be Amazon-employed delivery drivers going in and out. The company has a program called Amazon Flex, which works a lot like Uber and Lyft, with delivery “partners” using their own vehicles to deliver packages while maintaining control over when, where and how often they work. That’s the pitch, anyway.

“Delivery stations offer entrepreneurs the opportunity to build their own business delivering [Amazon’s] packages, as well as independent contractors the flexibility to be their own boss and create their own schedule delivering,” the project description reads.

There’s expected to be 112 “flex” drivers each day between 10:30 a.m. and 1 p.m., increasing to 172 drivers during peak seasonal periods. The distribution center will generate a total of 542 daily trips (in/out), increasing to 828 daily trips during peak seasonal periods, the plans say.

Here’s another rendering of the warehouse and northern parking lot:

And here’s the southern lot:

The land is already zoned as a business park, which means it won’t need to be changed. The parcels are currently owned by Stephen Moser and Dan and Debra Woods, according to the documents we’ve reviewed.

What does the property look like currently? Here’s the northern parcel:

And here’s the southern:

Of the 18 county-protected trees onsite, the project would remove three and while preserving the other 15.

So, what will the place look like once it’s built? Well, good news and bad news on that front. The good news? Panattoni did create visual renderings of the warehouse. The bad news? Those renderings have the building almost completely obscured by surrounding landscaping.

Here’s the view from the northeast corner of the property:

And here’s the view from the northwest:

Construction is expected to be completed by late 2028, according to the Panattoni description. Email communications from county planners to the development company indicate that there’s still some work to be done before construction begins. In November, county planners noted that additional field studies for bees and rare plants are required.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife, meanwhile, recommended incorporating native landscaping species rather than the initially planned Afghan pine and Chinese hackberry. The California Coastal Commission has expressed some concerns about the mitigation approach for impacts to Environmentally Sensitive Habitat Areas (ESHA). And county staff said in an email last year that it was still awaiting comments from other agencies.

There’s bound to be plenty more to report on as the project progresses. We reached out to the county in hopes of speaking with one of the planners working on this project but have not yet heard back. Stay tuned!