(Bloomberg) -- Amazon.com Inc. is opening its first fulfillment center in New York, part of an ongoing push to store inventory closer to customers to enable faster deliveries.
The new 855,000 square-foot (79,400 square-meter) facility is planned for Staten Island, the Seattle-based e-commerce company said Wednesday without specifying a timetable. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo called the center, about the size of Buckingham Palace, “state-of-the-art.” It will create more than 2,250 full-time jobs and feature innovative technology including Amazon Robotics working alongside employees to pick, pack and ship items such as household essentials, books and toys.
Until now, Amazon has served the New York market from facilities in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The Staten Island warehouse is part of its push to keep inventory closer to buyers so it can deliver items more quickly, bringing the experience of shopping online closer to the instant gratification of a trip to the store.
Amazon, the world's largest online retailer, has been laying plans for new fulfillment centers across the U.S. and the globe as it broadens its offerings from books and toys to groceries. The New York center marks one of 21 new U.S. warehouses announced so far this year that will employ more than 25,000 people.
Amazon is opening similar centers in Sacramento, California; Kansas City, Kansas; North Randall, Ohio, and other cities, adding to more than 80 such centers worldwide.
To contact the reporters on this story: Molly Schuetz in New York at mschuetz9@bloomberg.net, Spencer Soper in Seattle at ssoper@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Tom Giles at tgiles5@bloomberg.net, Anne Riley Moffat
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