Amazon to Build San Jose Distribution Hub Amid Layoffs

Amazon is doubling down in Silicon Valley, developing a last-mile hub just south of downtown San Jose.

The e-retail behemoth plans to redevelop a 17.8-acre parcel at 1605 Seventh Street in the Spartan Keyes neighborhood, the Mercury News reported. The distribution center will span 106,800 square feet.

Amazon bought the Seventh Street site about five years ago for $59.3 million, or $3.3 million per acre.

Six industrial buildings, including a 279,000-square-foot structure, will be demolished to make way for the complex. Plans call for roughly 8,700 square feet of office space and about 36,600 square feet of external staging and loading areas.

It will employ 600 people for the last stages of package deliveries.

The site will operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week to support deliveries; an estimated 52 daily truck trips are expected to deliver packages to the site.

Demolition is slated to begin in July and finish next October. Construction is expected to begin in November of next year and wrap up in October 2027. The project is planned to be fully complete by December 2027.

The company hasn’t specified its service radius from the site, but filings suggest the hub will feed a wide stretch of the South Bay including San Jose, Campbell, Los Gatos, Scotts Valley and Santa Cruz.

The distribution center push comes less than a month after the company announced it intends to lay off 14,000 corporate workers, including more than 1,400 in California and more than 600 in the Bay Area, including 391 in Sunnyvale, 176 in Palo Alto and 76 in Santa Clara for a total of 643 in the region. The Seattle-based company employs nearly 7,500 people overall in the Bay Area.

— Chris Malone Méndez