Internet retailer Amazon.com’s same-day delivery station in development in West Jacksonville is adding a refrigerated area so that customers can fill grocery orders within hours.
At a project cost estimated at $9 million, Amazon wants to update the tenant space in the sortation and delivery warehouse for the refrigerated storage program.
"This expansion of our Jacksonville network with refrigerated capabilities allows us to better serve customers with same-day delivery of grocery items alongside traditional merchandise," said Sam Blatt, senior manager of economic development at Amazon, in an emailed statement June 4.
"The $9 million investment in this new same-day delivery facility demonstrates Amazon's commitment to Northeast Florida, where we continue to create jobs and provide our customers with faster delivery options for a wide variety of products."
Bryan Builders LLC of Longwood is the contractor.
Called Amazon SJA1 SSD, the facility at 1700 Imeson Road will be a same-day delivery fulfillment center designed to enable faster shipping.
The 12,000-square-foot refrigerated area will be operational around-the-clock, plans show. The permit shows it as part of the more than 270,000-square-foot center.
Amazon is using Building 2 in the 39.13-acre Commonwealth Logistics Center at southwest Imeson Road and Commonwealth Avenue, west of Interstate 295 and north of I-10.
Products will arrive by tractor-trailer trucks that use the loading dock positions on the truck court.
When unloaded, the products will be sorted into refrigeration units and then staged to be loaded into delivery vehicles.
Storage racks will be rolled into the loading area and the packages will be loaded into the personal vehicles of contract workers for final delivery.
The warehouses have been described as smaller, regional facilities designed to deliver high-demand items to customers within a 60-minute drive using the Amazon Flex delivery network, which allows people to use their own vehicles to make deliveries.
The city issued a permit March 14 for Bryan Builders to build-out the facility at a project cost of $16.6 million.
It issued a permit April 29 for Designed Conveyor Systems LLC of Franklin, Tennessee, to install a conveyor system at $4.22 million project.
On June 21, 2024, the city granted an administrative deviation from the city zoning code, saying the property owner was retrofitting the warehouse to provide for Amazon in the 272,190-square-foot structure built in 2023.
The deviation allows Amazon to provide 460 parking spaces on the site, up from the maximum 150 that had been allowed.
The city noted that the tenant proposed distributing through passenger vehicles. The 460 spaces would be used for the parking demands for employees and the flexible loading on-site.
The city then issued a horizontal development permit July 17, 2024, for removing the existing striping/curb and restriping the existing vehicle use at a project cost of $100,000.
Plans referred to the project as SJA1. Documents confirmed it as Amazon.
Amazon uses codes for its properties. SJA1 means it is the first of its variety in Jacksonville.
AboutAmazon.com explained that one of its newest same-day sites in Sacramento, California, is known as SCA5.
The property owner is listed as AIREIT Commonwealth Logistics Center LLC, in care of Ares Management LLC in Denver. InLight Real Estate Partners of Ponte Vedra Beach developed the park.
Amazon in Northeast Florida
The same-day delivery station will be Seattle-based Amazon’s 12th Jacksonville center.
The Seattle-based online retailer opened its first two fulfillment centers in September 2017 along Pecan Park Road in Northwest Jacksonville and October 2017 in AllianceFlorida at Cecil Commerce Center in West Jacksonville, with the help of $26.7 million in city and state incentives for creating 2,700 jobs.
Fulfillment centers reach 1 million square feet in size.
Since then, it opened another fulfillment center, two sortation centers, a heavy bulk freight center and several delivery stations.
None of those subsequent facilities received incentives.
Amazon.com also updated its Pecan Park Road distribution center site for its Amazon Flex program.
Flex.Amazon.com explains that Flex drivers download the app and look for convenient delivery opportunities.
Amazon says customers choose same-day delivery on eligible items marked for delivery by specific times.