It's as big as 11 football fields and open for business
While Gov. Glenn Youngkin was out of town recently, he broke his cellphone cover and ordered from Amazon a new one, which made it home before he did.
"I'm always amazed by that," he said on Tuesday. "It's magic."
After donning a yellow safety vest and placing steel-toed covers over his shoes, Youngkin and other state and local officials got the chance to see where some of the magic happens.
They toured Amazon's newest operations site in Stafford County, a 630,000-square-foot cross dock fulfillment center that's as big as 11 football fields. Conveyor belts and systems thread their way throughout the warehouse with bright yellow paint on safety railings, poles and stairs.
The conveyance equipment probably covers "over 5 miles, easily," said Mike Waterman, general manager of operations.
The cross dock is the massive white building with blue trim off Centreport Parkway, highly visible from Interstate 95. It takes in products from small- and medium-size sellers, sorts and repackages them, then sends them out by bulk to other facilities up and down the East Coast.
Items are put on shelves until customers hit that "Buy Now" button, then packages are dispersed to delivery stations, just like the one nearby that Amazon opened in October 2021. It's also in the Northern Virginia Gateway industrial park off Centreport Parkway and has created 750 direct and indirect jobs since its launch, according to Amazon.
The cross dock center, which began round-the-clock operations in March but held its formal ribbon-cutting this week, employs 750 people. Its workforce lives not only in the immediate Fredericksburg area, but north of 95 toward Washington and east of Stafford in the Northern Neck, Waterman said.
Employees represent a diverse population, he added, and include speakers of English, Spanish, French Creole, Farsi and other languages.
The newest facility represents an investment of about $150 million, the governor said, and "a testament to Amazon's continued investment in our community," said Deuntay Diggs, the George Washington District representative on the Stafford Board of Supervisors.
"Stafford County strategically designated this area as a logistics and distribution hub, and I am proud that Amazon recognizes our vision and chose this location," said Diggs, who spoke for the board.
He emphasized the "importance of this milestone" as evidenced by the presence of Youngkin and Caren Merrick, Virginia's secretary of commerce and trade, Stafford officials and state representatives.
State Sen. Tara Durant said she was thrilled to have the Amazon distribution facilities open in Stafford, calling them the kind of news she loves to see and a "beacon of hope for all of us in the area."
The formal ceremony was held in a room, just off the entrance to the center which was ringed with security officers. Outside on the warehouse floor, employees bustled about, also wearing yellow safety vests, as the sound of conveyance equipment echoed in the building.
The center also is referred to as RMN3. The three letters are the code for the nearby Stafford Airport, and Amazon names its facilities after airports to identify their geographic location.
Each day, an average of 50,000 packages comes to the Cross Dock, Waterman said. Freight comes in one end, is sorted in the middle under the direction of humans assisted by robotic arms generally referred to as "hungry hippos" and i-robots that carry packages to correct pallets.
Then, it's sent out on tractor–trailers.
More than 90 docks are used for inbound and outbound packages, and items typically come into and go out of the building the same day, said Le'Anne Hunter, a senior HR business partner.
In November 2021, when former Gov. Ralph Northam announced the coming of the new center, an on Stafford County's Department of Economic Development website stated, "Amazon: Lightning Strikes Twice in Stafford County."
The company gravitates toward areas of customer density, said Holly Sullivan, Amazon's vice president of worldwide economic development. That was evident in the corridor between Washington and Richmond, and Stafford's infrastructure, shovel-ready projects and easy access to I-95 added to the appeal, she said.
So did the workforce, including high numbers of veterans, Sullivan added. Waterman served in the Marine Corps for 25 years before he went to work for Amazon, and he let out an "oorah" during Tuesday's festivities.
"We're really stoked to show you this facility," he said.
Cathy Dyson
Health, King George, features and is a local columnist
