UNION, Ohio (WDTN) — Amazon announced its opening a new fulfillment center in the Miami Valley that will employee roughly 1,500 people.
The facility is scheduled to open near the Dayton airport in 2022. Construction on the 630,000 square-foot facility has already begun on the corner of Old Springfield Road and Union Airpark Boulevard.
Miami Valley business groups say the project has been in the works for a long time, and it’s great to see the effort start to pay off.
Jeff Hoagland is the president and CEO of the Dayton Development Coalition. He says, “It’s giving them a livable wage, these are over $15 an hour jobs, it’s giving them health care, other benefits. But that then allows them to buy a house, shop at a store, do things they may not be able to do right now.”
Hoagland says the Union and Dayton region should soon see a chain reaction of growth tied to Amazon’s soon-to-open facility. In addition to the centralized location, Hoagland says investments in regional infrastructure have made this area very desirable. “It gives these companies the confidence to build a facility like this and like the others because they do their homework.”
There’s no timeline yet for when the hiring process will begin, but a spokesperson says it usually starts a few months before the facility opens. Amazon says the 1,500 full-time jobs will include full benefits, and many of the jobs will use innovative robotics and technology.
Amazon spokesperson Andre Woodson says, “So everything from picking, packing, shipping customer orders, to supporting network logistics.”
Amazon is the latest in a string of companies to move to the Miami Valley, which Hoagland says is breeding more success throughout the area. “There’s a job for pretty much anyone in this Dayton region that wants it, from someone working in logistics to a rocket scientist working at Wright-Patterson Air Force base.”
Hoagland says this type of project is the payoff when the I-75 corridor was rebuilt many years ago, and it will take discipline and foresight to keep the momentum going and convince the next company to move here.
WATCH how the new facility could convince more companies to come to the Miami Valley:
Hoagland says, “What it’s doing is telling the rest of the United States that Dayton is the place to be for logistics.”
The success of enticing Procter and Gamble, Chewy, Crocs and now Amazon to the Miami Valley is having an enormous impact on the economy, but economic leaders also believe they’ll spur a chain reaction.
Hoagland says, “When we look back in 10 years, I think we’re going to look back at a lot of the things that were done in 2020 and we’re going to point to that and say ‘if we had not done that, these investments would not be here today.'”
Those investments include a variety of factors, including technology like the JobsOhio websites, job training programs, and transportation infrastructure like road improvements. And much of that work is already taking place. Hoagland says, “We’ve been looking at all the other roadways around that area. What dollars are going to be needed to put the infrastructure in place to accommodate this growth and this development?”
Hoagland says one of the region’s strengths is the vision to look forward and anticipate future needs to facilitate success. “We look strategically at what projects will move this region forward over the next 10-20 years. And we prioritize those projects, rank those projects, every single year.”
