How Pasco won a $150M Amazon robotic sortation center
By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Jan 26, 2022

Pasco County was passed over for the first wave of Amazon fulfillment centers in the early 2010s — but winning one of the e-commerce giant's robotic sortation centers more than makes up for it.

Amazon on Tuesday confirmed plans to build a $150 million robotic sortation facility in San Antonio's Eagle Industrial Park. The center will be 517,220 square feet and eventually employ 500 people. It's the deal that Bill Cronin, president and CEO of the Pasco County Economic Development Council, would rather have if he were forced to pick.

"In the past, a lot of people wanted the recognition that they won an Amazon project," Cronin told the Tampa Bay Business Journal. "For a lot of people, the name alone [meant] a sign of success. They won a beauty contest. Had we had the larger facility here, Amazon probably would have looked elsewhere for the others [facilities] because they do spread their facilities around."

The jobs the robotic sortation center creates will be more sophisticated than Amazon's fulfillment jobs. The jobs within the new center manage the robots, and the EDC said Amazon offers on-the-job training on "how the robots work, how they are programmed and how they read and navigate the center floor."

Amazon first rejected Pasco for a potential fulfillment center about seven years ago, shortly before Cronin took the helm at the EDC. In the years since, Cronin and his team have been working with landowners to prepare their sites for commercial development — and be ready for an opportunity like the robotic sortation facility. The Pasco Ready Sites program, funded through the Penny for Pasco sales tax, pays for the prep work to get sites like the Eagle Industrial Park shovel ready.

In the time between the fulfillment center rejection and landing the robotic facility, Amazon also built a last-mile facility in Lutz. The EDC helped with site selection on that project, Cronin said, and with expedited permitting for both the robotic and last-mile facilities. He expects construction to begin by early February; Atlanta-based Seefried Industrial Properties, which builds Amazon facilities across the U.S., is the developer.

It was in early 2021 that Cronin's team was first approached about the robotic center; about six months after, in mid-2021, they had a commitment from the e-commerce company. Financial incentives were never discussed, Cronin said. Across the U.S., he said, Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) seems to be pursuing fewer financial incentives.

"Some people might take exception to this, but anybody can win a deal on price," he said, "by throwing money or incentives at it. The deals EDOs win without incentives are the ones you win with effort."