Here’s what you can expect to see when likely Amazon warehouse is built in Turlock
While officials continue to say they cannot confirm that the one-million-square-foot warehouse planned for the Turlock Regional Industrial Park will be an Amazon facility, more details about the project have emerged, including that it will employ at least 700 workers.
Turlock provided The Bee with more than a dozen documents related to the project in response to a California Public Records Act request the newspaper filed with the city.
The documents fill in some of the details for the warehouse-distribution center, which will be nearly one third of a mile long and as wide as two football fields and as tall as 55 feet. The facility will be off Fulkerth Road just west of Highway 99.
It will employ approximately 700 employees working in shifts of approximately 350 employees, according to one document. The facility will operate 24 hours a day seven days a week. But another document states the facility will need at least 1,000 parking spaces for its employees.
Turlock officials have said they cannot discuss the project because the city signed a nondisclosure agreement with the project’s applicant, Seefried Industrial Properties, stating they would keep their discussions about the project confidential.
But the agreement signed by then City Manager Toby Wells in July 2020 states Turlock would have to provide documents that fall within the scope of the Pubic Records Act. The city has previously signed nondisclosure agreements with other companies in the industrial park, Maryn Pitt, assistant to the city manager, said in an email.
While officials will not confirm that Amazon will operate the distribution center, there are strong indications it will be an Amazon facility.
Developer has ties to Amazon
Seefried Industrial Properties describes itself on its website as “a longtime Amazon development and project management partner.” And the president of QR AMZ Propco, the real estate holding company that bought the 75-plus acres in the industrial park for the project, works for QuadReal, a Canadian real estate company that also has worked with Amazon.
A Seefried official said this week that he could not comment, and QR AMZ officials have not responded to requests for comment. But one of the property owners who sold his land for the project told The Bee in April this is an Amazon project but then asked that his name not be used and declined to speak further.
A city document describes the facility as an “e-commerce warehouse and distribution center” that will be “operated by a large internet retailer for the fulfillment of internet purchases.”
QR AMZ purchased the land from several owners, and the purchases were completed in March. The roughly 75-acre site is bounded by Fulkerth Road to the north, an irrigation canal on its south, Fransil Lane on its west and the future extension of Tegner Road on its east.
A $150 million project?
The land had primarily been almond orchards, though it also had two homes and a shed on it. Work, including clearing and grading the land, has started.
The documents provided by the city give different dates for construction to be competed, with one stating April 2022 and another September-October 2022. The project’s building permit states the project will have an “estimated improvement cost” of $150 million. It’s not clear whether that is the value of constructing the facility and its other improvements.
While Seefried Industrial Properties will not comment, the company’s website provides details about the facility. The construction project manager includes the Turlock facility as one of his career highlights, calling it a build-to-suit development of a “traditional non-sort facility.”
In a build-to-suit development, the owner develops the property and then leases it to a single tenant. Amazon operates six types of facilities and only one is a non-sort.
Larger-sized consumer goods
Amazon defines these facilities on its website as “ranging in size from 600,000 to 1 million square feet, non-sortable fulfillment centers employ more than 1,000 full-time associates. In these centers, associates pick, pack, and ship bulky or larger-sized customer items such as patio furniture, outdoor equipment, or rugs.”
Amazon provided a general comment in April about how it is always exploring its options but provided no specifics. It did not have a comment for this story.
“At this time, we don’t have anything to share beyond the comment we provided when you last reached out,” a company spokesman said in an email. “Happy to connect when we have more to confirm.”
The roughly 2,600-acre Turlock Regional Industrial Park is home to more than a dozen agricultural or ag-related businesses, including Blue Diamond, Foster Farms, US Cold Storage, Sunnyside Farms and California Dairies. The warehouse-distribution center will be the first of its kind for the industrial park.
The Bee called or emailed all of the ag and ag-related businesses within the industrial park regarding this project. Foster Farms was the only one to respond, with a spokesman saying the company would have no comment.
Amazon already has large distribution centers in the Northern San Joaquin Valley with facilities in Patterson, Tracy and Stockton.
Bee reporter Marijke Rowland contributed to this report.
