Amazon Will Snap Up Giant Spec Building at LPKC

Anyone following construction of the massive 822,000-square-foot Inland Port XIV building at Logistics Park Kansas City–the largest ever built on a spec basis in this market–might have thought that a state-of-the-art distribution center like that would have had Amazon.com written all over it.

And they would have been right: The on-line retailer announced today that it would lease every square inch of that facility in the logistics park near Edgerton, in southwest Johnson County, and said it would need 1,000 full-time workers to staff  customer-fulfillment operations there. That roominess is up considerably from the operations at Lenexa Logistics Center, where Amazon works in a comparatively modest 267,000-square-foot space–a building that not long ago was considered massive for this market.

“We’re excited to bring 1,000 great full-time jobs with benefits to the Kansas City region and proud to further invest in the state with this new fulfillment center,” said Akash Chauhan, vice president of North American operations for Amazon, in a news release. “We are grateful for the enthusiasm of our many state and local partners who have supported Amazon in bringing a new fulfillment center to Kansas. This has been a true team effort.”

The building is expected to be completed this summer, giving the logistics park 4.8 million combined feet of warehouse and distribution space at the site where BNSF Railway connects this market to the world.