Amazon is in the early stages of planning for a 1 million-square-foot retail distribution facility in Norwich, Connecticut, the company confirmed to Supply Chain Dive.
The Norwich center is expected to serve as a “first mile” facility, according to Elena Rossi, a project manager from Bluewater Property Group, which is working with the e-commerce giant on the project. First mile facilities receive goods and then distribute them to “middle mile” sortation centers before they are entered into last-mile centers that handle order fulfillment to customers.
Amazon plans to equip the facility with high-tech sortation equipment to store bulk items for order fulfillment further down the supply chain. The facility will pick, pack and ship goods to localized delivery centers “on a 24/7 basis,” Rossi said during a meeting of Norwich’s Inland Wetlands, Watercourses and Conversation Commission earlier this month.
The site is one of two facilities in the state currently in early development, with the other a fulfillment facility in Killingly, the company said. Amazon added it has not set a planned opening date for either facility.
Network growth is nothing new for Amazon, including along the East Coast. The company is currently in the early planning stages for a 4 million-square-foot operations facility in Holbrook, New York. Amazon expects to invest $1 billion into the project, which it said will create 1,000 full-time jobs.
The e-commerce titan also previously said it would open a 3 million-square-foot robotics fulfillment center in North Carolina this year, while reworking multiple facilities in Florida to convert them into fulfillment sites.
Elsewhere, Amazon was expected to begin construction on a 1.2 million-square-foot distribution center in Terrell, Texas, and a roughly 250,000-square-foot sorting warehouse in Georgetown, Texas, this month.
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