Business leaders in Florida’s Palm Beach County touted last week the opening of a warehouse for retail giant Amazon for creating hundreds of jobs.
Amazon leases the 96,759-square-foot building at Turnpike Crossing Industrial Park in West Palm Beach. The company has been rapidly expanding its warehouse footprint nationwide to ensure it has a distribution center near major population hubs to keep up with demand for 24-hour shipping.
“The new station powers Amazon’s last-mile delivery capabilities to speed up deliveries for customers in Palm Beach County,” the Business Development Board of Palm Beach County noted in a statement. The facility employs “hundreds” of full-time and part-time workers making at least $15 an hour, the board added.
The Seattle-based e-commerce and media company reported spending $4.7 billion on equipment and property over the third quarter that ended Sept. 30, up 40% from the same time a year earlier. Over the past nine months, the company reported it has spent $11.5 billion on property and equipment.
CoStar News reported in August that the online retailer was the tenant in the building, which is one of six being built by Indianapolis-based Duke Realty at Turnpike Crossing. At the time, Amazon declined to share information about the project, and a vice president of leasing for developer Duke Realty did not return phone calls.
Palm Beach County industrial rents rose 4.6% in the past year and have posted an average annual gain of 5.2% since 2016, according to the latest submarket report from CoStar Market Analytics. Vacancies remain below the cycle average but are trending higher in recent quarters, the report noted.
An Amazon spokesperson did not immediately respond to an email.
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