Amazon revives 650K sf warehouse plan in SF’s Showplace Square

Amazon.com has moved forward on a 650,000-square-foot warehouse in San Francisco’s Showplace Square at the end of an 18-month moratorium on distribution centers.

The Seattle-based e-commerce giant has resubmitted plans to build the last-mile warehouse at 900 7th Street, the San Francisco Business Times reported.

Amazon, which filed plans to build the facility in 2021, was stopped in its tracks in March last year when the city imposed the moratorium on new delivery facilities after environmentalists, laborers and neighbors staged a rally in front of City Hall to protest its expansion plans. 

The online retailer bought the 6-acre industrial site in 2020 for $202 million. 

Amazon’s proposal calls for a three-story warehouse, including 13,700 square feet of offices and 2,500 square feet of shops and restaurants, with rooftop parking for 395 cars. The complex would employ 200 delivery vans a day for the “last mile” to local customers. 

It could employ as many as 500 people, mostly drivers and workers to sort and load packages.

The application resubmitted this week aims to restart the approval process, and mirrors Amazon’s original application. 

Ron Frierson, Amazon’s director of economic development for the western U.S., said the paperwork includes a “required supplemental that’s necessary for a conditional use permit.”

“We’ve had community town halls, we’ve spoken with the mayor’s office, we’ve spoken with various supervisors and we have been incorporating all of their concerns regarding this project,” Frierson told the Business Times. “That’s why we feel so hopeful in moving forward, and that it will be approved this time.”

The property is zoned for industrial use. But the Amazon project was put on hold when the Board of Supervisors approved interim zoning controls in March 2022, responding to concerns about the project’s impacts on the surrounding community and opposition from labor unions. 

The zoning controls require a conditional use authorization for new parcel service uses in San Francisco through the end of September, adding an additional layer of review to such projects.

But more than a year after the controls were put in place, some city leaders remain leary about the Amazon expansion plan. District 6 Supervisor Matt Dorsey said his office has worked on legislation to extend the interim controls for another six months.

“That will give us some time to evaluate what the conditional use will be for regulating parcel delivery uses over a certain size,” Dorsey said.

— Dana Bartholomew

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