Tim Harty, The Business Times

Under the cover of the holiday shopping season, Amazon’s last-mile delivery station, a new 37,400-square-foot building near the airport in Grand Junction, began operating in October with no fanfare.

Three months later – Jan. 22 to be precise – it is having its grand opening.

Sam Bailey, Amazon’s head of economic development policy in Colorado, said rather than have such an event much closer to the actual opening date, Amazon preferred to avoid any disruption at a critical time.

“We try not to bother our sites during our busiest season with a big event,” Bailey said, “so we opted to hold off until we were out of the holiday season. … As you can imagine, when you start taking in that volume, thousands of packages to deliver, we want to give that site time to get them into a good rhythm, train up staff on the operations, so that we are in good shape to welcome everyone into the community and to hear about how our growth has been.”

Bailey said even with the holiday shopping and the winter weather, two things that could have caused hiccups as the new delivery station got up to speed, the transition went smoothly.

“We hired quickly, which is an indication Grand Junction has great talent that employers like Amazon can utilize,” he said. “We were able to train up. I think certainly the big thing that is always interesting, and I saw this when we did the Missoula (Montana) launch as well, we were launching right as the weather was starting to get interesting in Colorado.

“So, certainly making sure that as part of our training we’re promoting and ensuring safety and navigating through weather, whether it’s someone at our site or they’re delivering packages out of the community, I think the timing was just right.

“As snow starts to fall, that’s probably the biggest hiccup we can experience is delays as a result of weather conditions. But other than that, we’ve been successful at getting this site off the ground.”

As a last-mile delivery station, Bailey said Amazon limits how far it will go.

“Generally we will serve about a 45-minute to 60-minute territory from the delivery station, and a lot of factors can go into that,” he said. “We’re looking at where demand is. Is it most effective to ship via Amazon or through one of our partners like U.S. Postal Service?”

“So, for right now we’re looking for that 45-minute drive time, but certainly as we identify other demands in those areas beyond Grand Junction, Mesa County we will consider future investments or ways we can best serve those customers.”

Bailey said the Grand Junction site, which is at 800 Saccomanno Road, is “the first of Amazon’s investments outside of the Front Range of Colorado.”

Bailey said Amazon’s capital investment in the Grand Junction project was more than $25 million, and it was a relatively easy decision to make that investment.

“We did our homework, and we knew that we needed to be in a place like Grand Junction,” Bailey said.

Bailey said Amazon approached Curtis Englehart, executive director of the Grand Junction Economic Partnership, and said, “We are interested in coming to Grand Junction. We’d like to work with you to make sure what we’re proposing aligns with what the community is focused on from an economic development standpoint. We proposed the site where we also landed, and that alignment allowed us to move forward.”

Bailey said Amazon’s investment did not include any economic incentives, “because we did not pursue any.

“We were very candid with the community, we want to be here, we want to partner, we want to invest. And kudos to both the city of Grand Junction and their staff and the Grand Junction Economic Partnership. They made it very easy for us to execute this project and get a building on the ground.”

As a result, Grand Junction has a new business that currently employs about 75 people as either full, part-time or flex associates. Among the jobs at the site are: operations managers; receiving; package sorting and routing; and delivery.

Bailey wrote in a LinkedIn post eight months ago that most Amazon employees in customer fulfillment and transportation earn between $17 and $28 per hour.

MORE ABOUT GJ DELIVERY STATION

WHO DOESN’T WANT FASTER DELIVERY?

Grand Junction’s Amazon delivery station is deemed a “last-mile” delivery station.

Given that fast delivery time tends to be of particular importance to people who buy products on Amazon, the last-mile sites deliver on that.

Sam Bailey, Amazon’s head of economic development policy in Colorado, said such a site “allows us to take our delivery times, which are now between three to five days, down to two days or less and enhance the customer experience.

HEY, YOU’RE JUST LIKE US

The Grand Junction delivery station is similar to other stations recently opened around the Mountain West. To name two, Bailey mentioned Missoula, MT, and Idaho Falls, ID.

Of the latter, he pointed out it “represented the first expansion outside of the Boise Valley in the state of Idaho.” That makes it similar to Grand Junction, which Bailey said is the first delivery station in Colorado outside the Front Range.

“It highlights we’re recognizing we want to best serve our customers, whether they’d be in an urban corridor, or like in Colorado on the Western Slope,” Bailey said. “We have great customer demand and active accounts in Grand Junction and the surrounding area, so this investment allows us to best serve those customers.”

RIGHT SIZE FOR THE JOB

Grand Junction’s delivery station is 37,400 square feet, and Bailey said that’s similar size to other stations doing last-mile delivery.

He added Amazon looks at the average customer demand and the space it needs to accommodate its equipment inside to move and sort packages to the various routes.

“They are fairly standard in size and not much variation in nature,” Bailey said. “That also allows us to move really quickly when we do want to get a project, because we have a design that we can work with and integrate.”