Amazon’s massive $550 million warehouse and distribution center is rising near Buffalo — but local officials have reportedly expressed fears that the e-commerce giant won’t find enough workers for the projected 1,000 jobs when it opens.
The “first-mile” facility, about the size of 53 football fields, in the rural Town of Niagara has no public transportation service and the jobs are not considered particularly high-paying, though they will fetch more than minimum wage.
Due to open in 2026, it is being built at time when the workforce in Western New York shrinks and remote-work remains in high demand.
“I’m hoping we can find 1,000 people to come and work here,” Niagara Town Supervisor Sylvia Virtuoso told The Buffalo News.
“I think it’s quite challenging. We try to employ people in the town, and it’s difficult, and our wages are significantly higher. That’s going to be a major challenge.”
Construction cranes are hard at work on the site of the fulfillment center at 8995 Lockport Road, where the steel skeleton is being erected atop the 216-acre plot of land that was purchased by Amazon last month.
In 2022, local government agencies approved a $124 million package of tax incentives to entice Amazon to build the Niagara facility.
But the subsidy — which is said to be the ninth largest ever received by Amazon — sparked opposition due to the fact that residents were worried about the traffic problems the facility would cause as well as the $15-an-hour jobs — a wage deemed insufficient by many.
Virtuoso told The Buffalo News that there are plans to add a bus route that will enable workers to travel to the site from Niagara Falls and the SUNY Niagara Community College campus in Sanborn.
“I believe everybody will be able to get to work, if they want to work,” Virtuoso said.
“Many things can change, including the wages. We’re all on the same page. We know what it takes to employ the people, and I know Amazon does, too.”
The Post has sought comment from Amazon.
The 3.1 million-square-foot fulfillment center — where products are first processed before shipping — will use robots to receive, store and ship items that customers purchase through the company’s popular website.
Amazon operates three “first mile” facilities in New York State — in Rochester, Syracuse and Staten Island.
Overall, Amazon has built 10 fulfillment and sortation centers as well as 36 delivery stations across the Empire State since 2010 — adding around 47,000 jobs to the state economy.
In total, Amazon has invested $41.5 billion into New York State in the last 15 years.
In 2019, local progressive Democratic officials in New York City including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez led a public backlash against Amazon’s plans to build a headquarters in the Long Island City section of Queens.
Amazon had agreed to build the large campus along the East River shore, where it projected to hire 25,000 people. In exchange, the company secured tax breaks totaling around $3 billion from the city and state.
Then-Mayor Bill de Blasio and then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo supported the Amazon deal, arguing that the tax revenues that would be generated by the influx of new workers would eventually surpass the incentives that were offered to the company.
The outrage over the tax incentives prompted Amazon to abandon the planned Long Island City campus. Instead, it chose to expand plans for its HQ2 in Crystal City, Va. as well as further refurbish its main headquarters in Seattle.