Four months after Amazon.com announced its first fulfillment center in Jacksonville, plans were filed Friday for a second one in Cecil Commerce Center.
That will boost its Northeast Florida job base to at least 2,700 employees.
Plans were filed for the city to review a proposed 1,016,041-square-foot warehouse fulfillment center on 86 acres at 13333 103rd St.
Macgregor Associates Architects of Atlanta is the architect.
The site already is being cleared. The Conlan Co. is the contractor for that and also is building the first center.
The Cecil Commerce Center warehouse is expected to pick, pack and ship larger consumer items, such as kayaks and TVs, while the first center will handle smaller consumer goods.
In addition, Amazon.com applied for a permit to build out a 63,000-square-foot delivery station in North Jacksonville at the Alta Lakes Commerce Center at 11084 Cabot Commerce Circle.
The second fulfillment center has been expected.
On Oct. 11, City Council approved almost $7.1 million in taxpayer incentives for the unidentified Project Velo, a 1 million-square-foot, 1,200-job product distribution center planned at AllianceFlorida at Cecil Commerce Center in West Jacksonville.
Of those jobs, 325 will be paid an average of more than $50,000 a year. The remainder would be warehouse workers likely making $12-$15 an hour, or at least $25,000 a year.
The incentives legislation said the $116 million center would be developed on 86 acres at 13333 103rd St. The jobs would be created by the end of 2019.
Fort Worth-based Hillwood Investment Properties is the master developer at Cecil Commerce Center and is buying the property from the city for development.
Hillwood has been laying the groundwork for the project for months, but Senior Vice President Dan Tatsch has consistently declined comment about its identity.
All along, Project Velo sounded similar to the North Jacksonville fulfillment center that Amazon.com announced July 27.
That $200 million multilevel center will be 2.4 million square feet, with a footprint of 855,000 square feet.
A development team of Seefried Industrial Properties Inc. and USAA Real Estate Co., along with Conlan, is building it on about 170 acres at 12900 Pecan Park Road, just north of Interstate 295 near Jacksonville International Airport.
That center will employ 1,500 full-time workers, with 500 making an average $50,000 and the rest in the $12-$15 hourly range.
Both centers will hire more workers for seasonal work at the holidays.
Incentives for the North Jacksonville center will total $18.4 million in city and state refunds, grants, training and road improvements.
Amazon.com has been on a roll this year, announcing at least 19 fulfillment centers across the country ranging from 600,000 to 1.1 million square feet, including the Jacksonville centers.
Through August, it was announcing an average of two fulfillment centers a month this year. Among those, it announced multiple centers in several cities.
Employment for each of the centers ranges from “hundreds and hundreds” to 1,500.
In most cases, the company announced plans to develop separate fulfillment centers in those areas — one for small goods like toys, electronics, books and the like and another for large items like TVs, sporting goods and furniture.
The scenario already exists in central Florida. The company operates a 1 million-square-foot fulfillment center in Lakeland for large items and another 1.1 million-square-foot center for smaller items in Ruskin, 46 miles away.
In Jacksonville, the two warehouse centers will be about 23 miles apart.
The company has not responded to emails seeking a comment about Project Velo.
A spokeswoman said in August, when asked about the emerging Cecil Commerce Center distribution center, that the company has a longstanding practice of not commenting about its future road map.
As of July, Amazon.com operated more than 50 fulfillment centers in the U.S. with more than 90,000 full-time employees.
Amazon.com is expected to start filling the North Jacksonville positions by mid-2017 to be up and running by the holiday season.
The city and JAX Chamber are developing a program to help North Jacksonville job candidates prepare to apply. A detailed plan is expected by year-end.
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