Massive Amazon fulfillment center to start local work Sunday

The brand-new, 1-million-square-foot Amazon fulfillment center in Park City will become operational Sunday.

Two hundred employees will begin filling orders for the online retail giant, which says it plans to employ between 700 and 1,000 workers throughout the year, depending on customer demand.

“It’s truly amazing what’s been accomplished in the last 10 and a half months,” said Sean Fox, Park City’s city manager. “A year ago, nobody even knew that Amazon was coming here.”

In 10 and a half months, it’s taken 450,000 man hours to get the facility at 7130 N. Broadway up and running, Fox said.

Amazon already has a 140,000-square-foot delivery station in northeast Wichita known as a “last mile” facility where packages are loaded into vans for delivery.

The company has fielded bruising criticism about its treatment of workers, particularly those in similar warehouse environments to the Park City facility. The Strategic Organizing Center reported in June that Amazon’s warehouse workers suffer higher rates of injury than warehouse workers employed with other companies.

For every 100 Amazon warehouse workers there were 5.9 serious injuries in 2020, which is nearly 80% higher than the serious injury rate at non-Amazon warehouses, the report found.

Asked to comment on safety measures implemented in the new Park City site, Amazon’s Regional PR Manager Andy DiOrio chose to speak broadly about the company.

“Nothing’s more important than the health and safety of our employees,” DiOrio wrote in an email Friday evening. “Last year, we grew our dedicated workplace health and safety team to more than 6,200 employees and invested more than $1B in new safety measures and technology processes as well as expanding programs like WorkingWell, to keep our employees safe.

“We are continuously learning and seeing improvements in employee safety. Our vision is to become Earth’s Best Employer and Earth’s Safest Place to Work.”

James Kwok is general manager of the new facility, which Amazon is referring to as “ICT 2.”

Kwok said the Park City fulfillment center is designed to accommodate as many as 1,500 employees.

“By this holiday season, we should be wrapping up with well over 1,000 people,” he said.

Kwok, who has worked with Amazon for the past five years, said all new associates hire on at a rate of $15 an hour. He explained the various duties employees will be performing.

“It goes all the way from inbound doc where you’re unloading a lot of the items that people typically order on Amazon from our vendors, and then we receive it and stow it into our inventory,” Kwok said.

“Once a customer places an order, then that’s when we’ll have our associates go and pick the order. Then we will pack it, slam it and then send it out to our last-mile delivery services.”

Amazon is the world’s largest online retailer by market cap. The company’s effective federal income tax rate of 9.4%, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. It has faced increased scrutiny in recent years from regulators and legislators concerned about the business incentives it often receives at the state and local levels.

On Friday, a small group of local, state and federal officials including U.S. Rep. Ron Estes toured the Amazon site.

“Having a big warehouse like this with the footprint that Amazon does on delivery, just like so much of our other retail sales throughout the country, people are looking for having access to goods and this is going to make it a whole lot easier for people to do that,” Estes said afterwards.

All five Sedgwick County commissioners were also in attendance.

“I want to come back and see it operational,” Commissioner Lacey Cruse said.

Park City didn’t offer Amazon any cash incentives, but the city built a roundabout at 77th and Broadway in Park City to accommodate the facility.

“It’s already creating a better road system here, so that’s incredible,” Cruse said.

The city also constructed a $1.5 million sewer line that stretches for a mile and a half from 77th Street to 61st Street.

Cruse said she expects the infrastructure investment to pay dividends for Park City and the surrounding community.

“I’m sure that things are going to pop up around here,” she said.

This story was originally published August 13, 2021 at 4:44 PM.