Amazon's 107 feet high, 3 MM SF., first-mile operation in Niagara County is no longer code named "Project Fifi"

This site plan for the Amazon warehouse in the Town of Niagara was submitted as "Project Fifi" to the Niagara County Planning Board in March 2022. Thomas J. Prohaska

The five-story, 3-million-square-foot building proposed for a cornfield in the Town of Niagara is no longer code named "Project Fifi."

"I am with Amazon," Maura Kennedy, an economic development manager with the e-commerce giant, told the Niagara County Planning Board Monday.

The formal acknowledgement that the $300 million warehouse planned for 8995 Lockport Road would be an Amazon fulfillment center came with new details about the project.

"We are proposing to use it for our fulfillment center, which we call our first-mile operation," Kennedy said.

That means tractor-trailers haul in goods that Amazon sells and haul out goods that have been purchased, heading for other sites in the company's distribution network, including "last-mile sites" where the company's blue delivery vans are loaded.

About 200 to 300 tractor-trailers would visit the site each day, with the most being 24 in an hour, according to traffic engineer Amy Dake of Rochester's SRF Associates. Amazon's blue delivery vans wouldn't be seen, except for orders from customers in the immediate area.

The site, if approved, would have 1,000 employees, with additional seasonal workers during the fourth quarter of each year.

The project cleared the Niagara County Planning Board on Monday and is headed to Town of Niagara officials for review.

The distribution center that the Seattle-based e-commerce giant and its developer have proposed for 216 acres in the Town of Niagara is similar to the project the company scrapped just off the Niagara Thruway on Grand Island.

"This site totally came to our our attention because the Town of Niagara reached out to us," Kennedy told the county board.

The east and west sides of the proposed new warehouse and distribution center for Amazon in the Town of Niagara. Town of Niagara Planning Board

Kennedy said the town contacted Amazon about 18 months ago, shortly after the retailer gave up on building in Grand Island because of public opposition.

Kennedy promised salaries of at least $15 an hour.

"Typically in a market like this, we see a little above that," she said.

Kimberly R. Nason, an attorney with Phillips Lytle, the Buffalo law firm representing Amazon, said the Town of Niagara will make information available about the project.

"We will respond in writing to every comment we receive," Nason said.

JB Partners LLC, a real estate firm based in Atlanta, plans to acquire the land, which has four parcels, and to ask the town to consolidate it into one parcel, Nason said.

"The site is under contract," John Bancroft of JP Partners said Monday.

The building is "prototypical" for Amazon, and almost identical to the one that was proposed on Grand Island.

A shovel-ready field at the intersection of Packard and Lockport Road in the Town of Niagara, seen Thursday, March 3, 2022, is to be location of an Amazon distribution center. John Hickey

"Roughly the same footprint, very similar," Bancroft said.

That footprint is 650,000 square feet, the measurement of the ground floor.

Mike Finan of Langan Engineers said the building will be positioned roughly in the center of the parcel. Nearly half of the land to be bought lies within a flood plain, so 105 acres will be undisturbed.

"There are spatterings of wetlands," Finan said.

The building is planned at 107 feet high, with 55 loading docks, 469 spaces for tractor-trailers and 1,755 parking spaces. The employees would work in two 10-hour shifts, Nason said. Kennedy said there are two-hour buffer times between the shifts.

About 900 trees will be planted around the property, Nason's letter stated. Finan said there will be landscaped berms around the perimeter.

The plan calls for four driveways, three of them with traffic signals, Dake said. The main entrance would be at Lockport and Packard roads, where Dake recommended both left-turn and right-turn lanes at a signal. Left-turn lanes would be installed at the other entrances, one on Lockport Road for cars and tractor-trailers, and a truck entrance on Packard Road.

The fourth driveway would be for exit use only, onto Tuscarora Road, which Dake said "would be improved from the driveway location all the way to out to Lockport Road."

Peak traffic hours would be at shift changes, between 6:30 and 7:30 a.m. and between 5:30 and 6:30 p.m., Dake said.

The variances being sought from the town include a height variance, because the town has a 40-foot height limit in heavy industrial zones, and exceptions to the town's 200-square-foot limit for signs. The three Amazon signs would be 275 to 288 square feet, Nason said.

Construction is expected to last 18 to 24 months.