Here's a glimpse of what Amazon is planning on the 82 acres it bought in Temple Terrace
By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Jun 26, 2020

Amazon.com Inc. is planning a large new distribution center on the land it purchased in Temple Terrace — and it could be one of the e-commerce giant's new prototypes that cater to dense urban areas.

Seefried Industrial Properties received city approval for a 633,000-square-foot distribution center on the land that Amazon now owns on June 2. Atlanta-based Seefried is a preferred Amazon developer. The site is south of Harney Road and west of U.S. Highway 301.

The height for the majority of the building approved by the city is 90 feet, with parapets that reach as high as 100 feet. By comparison, the wall height on Amazon's Ruskin fulfillment center is 45 feet, and its wall height in Lakeland is 32 feet, according to county property records.

The development will also include 20-foot sound buffering walls, according to plans presented to the city.

Temple Terrace officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday. Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) has not responded to a request for comment.

Warehouses have been built increasingly taller in recent years as industrial tenants seek maximum usable height for stacking product — otherwise known as clear height. Demand for high clear-height buildings is expected to increase in the wake of the novel coronavirus pandemic as retailers stockpile goods to avoid the shortages that plagued grocers and other stores in March.

The Temple Terrace project is rumored in commercial real estate circles to be similar in nature to a multistory prototype Amazon debuted in the Seattle area in 2019. That type of facility allows it to offer same-day and next-day shipping to customers in densely populated areas. At 590,000 square feet, the three-story Seattle warehouse is close in size to the one proposed in Temple Terrace.

While Amazon has previously built four-story warehouses — like this one in Milwaukee — the Seattle one is "the first of its kind to open in the U.S. with multiple floors that large delivery trucks can access by ramps," reports the WSJ.