Amazon plans to expand Vacaville complex to 2.1 million square feet
Amazon next year plans to nearly double the size of its already sizable Vacaville hub of warehouses, inking a lease for the North Bay’s largest commercial building built to date.
The Seattle-based e-commerce giant confirmed it has signed a lease for the newly completed 1.23 million-square-foot Building C at 920 Eubanks Drive. With floor area equivalent to 21 football fields, 209 truck docks and an inventory-stacking clear height of 42 feet, it’s the largest of three buildings approved for the 89.7-acre Midway Commerce Center project.
”Plans are in the very early stages and we’ll share more details in the future,” Amazon spokesperson Natalie Banke told the Business Journal in an email.
The Midway project team on Oct. 25 had announced that the first two warehouses were complete but didn’t disclose the name of the “national e-commerce tenant” that would be occupying the whole building in the second quarter of 2024.
Amazon has committed to five North Bay facilities over the past six years, but only three have come to fruition.
The company first planted its North Bay flag with a 321,000-square-foot Vacaville sortation center at 300 Crocker Drive in 2017. In 2021, it opened a freshly constructed 202,000-square-foot delivery station at a site in American Canyon’s Napa Logistic Park that had been envisioned for a 1 million-square-foot building.
Also in 2021, the e-tailer opened in a new 617,000-square-foot sortation center at 4800 Midway Drive in NorthBay Logistics Center.
But two Sonoma County lease commitments in 2020 and 2021 fizzled, including the 250,000-square-foot Victory Station project south of the city of Sonoma and a 180,000-square-foot warehouse in Airport Business Center near Sonoma County airport. By in the first quarter of last year, Amazon backed out of the Victory Station and airport-area projects.
Also in early 2022, news reports started surfacing that Amazon across the country was delaying or canceling other warehouse projects as well as exiting leased facilities. This came as other retailers were noting a slowdown in e-commerce growth.
The other Midway Commerce Center warehouse just completed is Building A at 850 Eubanks Drive. The 198,490-square-foot rear-loading building a 36-foot clear height and mechanical dock levers at every other position.
Building A features LED lighting, 4,000 amps of power, mechanical levers and dock deals at every other dock position, metal roof deck supporting an insulated, 20-Year TPO roof, and 2,991 square feet of high-finish offices.
The remaining Midway building to be built, and said to be ready for building permits to be issued, is Building B at 870 Eubanks Drive. At 105,908 square feet, it would have a 32-foot clear height and what’s said to be California’s first use of cross-laminated timber building. That wood framing would be overlain by insulated metal panel in lieu of concrete, reducing carbon footprint by about 30% compared with conventional tilt-wall construction, which was used in Buildings C and A.
Ridgeline and Affinius Capital are the project developers.
Cushman and Wakefield and KBC Advisors were the real estate brokers in the Amazon lease deal.
Jeff Quackenbush covers wine, construction and real estate. Reach him at jquackenbush@busjrnl.com or 707-521-4256.
