Amazon plans to hire hundreds of employees for a three-building distribution center that will open this year on the site of the former Maywood Park horse track, as part of the e-commerce giant’s ongoing race to deliver packages to customers faster, the company confirmed Tuesday.
It will be Amazon’s largest distribution center near Chicago, less than 2 miles from the city limits. Seattle-based Amazon will move into all of the approximately 623,000 square feet at Chariot Logistics Center in Melrose Park.
Amazon plans for a last-mile delivery station on the site, saying in an emailed statement Tuesday that the company will have hundreds of full- and part-time jobs at the facility, starting at $15 per hour. Amazon has yet to begin hiring for the facility.
Delivery stations are part of Amazon’s sprawling supply chain, used to deliver packages directly to nearby customers. Delivery stations allow some drivers to work as independent contractors, using their own vehicles to deliver packages and earn compensation based on the number of deliveries.
The 40-acre warehouse development, by Atlanta-based Ridgeline Property Group, is expected to be completed by the end of the month.
The industrial development’s name is a nod to the property’s nearly seven decades of harness racing, before it closed in 2015. Amazon’s distribution center will be southwest of the corner of North and First avenues. The largest of the three warehouses will have about 252,000 of square feet of space.
On the northern edge of the former racetrack, another developer plans almost 16 acres of retail. That developer, Chicago-based GW Properties, has commitments from restaurants and shops to occupy eight of 10 lots, GW principal Mitch Goltz said. He declined to identify the tenants.
Ridgeline was represented in the lease by Cushman & Wakefield brokers Larry Goldwasser, Colin Green, Matt Cowie and Michelle Maguire.
Amazon has been beefing up its network of distribution centers in the Chicago area and throughout the state to keep up with the fast-rising volume of online shopping.
Amazon has opened more than 20 warehouse facilities within the past four years, according to supply chain and logistics consulting firm MWPVL International.
The largest is a 1 million-square-foot facility in Aurora. Recently, Amazon has been adding a series of smaller warehouses near densely populated suburbs and neighborhoods, in order to deliver orders as quickly as an hour or two in some areas.
In September, Amazon confirmed that the company signed a 237,000-square-foot lease for a distribution center in Skokie. At the time, Amazon said it has more than 11,000 full-time workers in Illinois.
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