An Atlanta commercial real-estate developer has bought three Kernersville sites being primed for a potential Amazon fulfillment center.
According to the Guilford County Register of Deeds office, HPC-Seefried NC I LLC has made three land purchases since June 8. The deed transactions were posted Monday.
HPC-Seefried has an address of 3333 Riverwood Parkway, the same as Seefried Properties Inc., which has developed similar fulfillment centers for the online retailing giant.
The biggest lot was purchased for $10.41 million in the Triad Business Park subdivision. The seller was TDO Land Holding LLC, listed with Arthur Samet as its manager and an address of 309 Gallimore Dairy Road, Suite 102.
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Adjacent lots were sold by Brian and Kris Dooley of Colfax for $500,000, and by Andrea and Mark Harris II of Colfax for $295,000.
Amazon’s proposed plans surfaced May 30 for a 1-million-square-foot center that could employ up to 953 full-time and full-time equivalent workers (two or more people working combined hours that equal full-time employment).
John H. Boyd, a national site-selection expert based in New Jersey, has projected that the fulfillment center could represent a $150 million capital investment.
Seefried submitted a project site plan to the town of Kernersville on May 9 on behalf of Amazon. The plan was compiled by Triad Design Group, a Greensboro civil-engineering firm.
The site is near the FedEx Ground operations on Old Greensboro Road in Kernersville. It’s within 10 miles of the FedEx sorting hub at Piedmont Triad International Airport.
The project is labeled as Triad/GSO1. The company isn’t named in the site plan, but Amazon’s logo appears on two pages that detail signage plans for the center.
Neither Amazon nor Seefried officials could not be reached for comment about the project.
Jeff Hatling, Kernersville’s community development director, said Amazon has not made a request for economic incentives. It is likely, however, that it will , given that it has done so for other fulfillment center projects.
“Triad Business Park does not require any board or commission action,” Hatling said June 6. “The only active project we are working on is Project Triad. We’re currently reviewing construction plans.”
Hatling said that process typically takes between 30 and 60 days “depending how fast everyone is reacting to review comments.”
On Tuesday, Hatling said the town is waiting on revised plans for the project.
Boyd said Amazon’s apparent decision was “all about market access and proximity to (the) FedEx Ground hub in Kernersville and sorting hub at Piedmont Triad International Airport. Nothing else.”
“The Triad Business Park seems like a very logical, and indeed a smart, candidate site for this project,” he said.
According to Glassdoor, a jobs listing and information website, the average salary for Amazon fulfillment center employees is $13 an hour, about $27,000 a year.
Several employment studies have shown that working at an Amazon fulfillment center is not for everyone. For example, Amazon makes it clear that the job can be taxing, particularly during the peak holiday shipping season of November and December. Workers can be required to work up to 12-hour shifts and walk 7 to 12 miles during a shift. Most employees must be able to lift up to 49 pounds.
Boyd said modern fulfillment centers “not only employ lower-skilled workers, like forklift operators, but also information-technology professionals doing inventory and other software-related functions.”
The plan map lists a two-story, 980,100-square-foot warehouse; a 24,025-square-foot office; and a 1,874-square-foot training center.
There are plans for 1,069 parking spaces, 235 trailer parking spaces and 99 loading docks.
Amazon has 102 fulfillment centers across the country, according to Avalara, a tax-software firm, including five in Tennessee, three in Florida and two each in Georgia, South Carolina and Virginia. Most of those centers are about 1 million square feet, about the same as what’s proposed for Kernersville.
The nearest fulfillment centers to North Carolina are in Spartanburg and West Columbia, S.C., and Petersburg, Va.
The company also has 27 sorting centers nationwide, including one in Concord, its only such facility in North Carolina. Those hubs typically are about one-third the size of fulfillment centers.
There also are receiving centers in Charlotte and Durham, both also about a third of the size of a fulfillment center.
Altogether, Amazon has about 2,000 employees in North Carolina.