Amazon distribution center in Solano County wins ‘Top Real Estate Projects' award

A spacious new 321,933-square-foot state-of-the-art warehouse and distribution center at 300 Crocker Drive in the Vacaville Business Park was preleased by electronic commerce giant Amazon. This is Amazon's first distribution center in the North Bay.

Phil Garrett, executive managing director, and Jon Quick, senior vice president with Colliers International's Fairfield office were the listing brokers.

“Amazon moved into this building in October,” said Buzz Oates' Chief Investment Officer Kevin Ramos. “The facility serves as a collection center for merchandise arriving from the Bay Area and Sacramento that is sorted by ZIP codes and delivered to the U.S. Post Office or UPS for final delivery.”

This 22-acre site was expanded with the addition of four adjacent acres to accommodate 600 extra parking spaces for up to 500 employees during the “surge” holiday rush period.

This is the latest in a series of Amazon distribution center locations that includes those in Sacramento and Richmond, the East Bay along with Tracy, Patterson and at the 600,000-square-foot sorting hub at the Stockton airport - where three Amazon Prime Air cargo jets arrive each day loaded with goods. Amazon also has a dozen distribution centers in Southern California.

General contractor Buzz Oates has built and leased a total of 3.3 million square feet of warehouse space in the Fairfield and Vacaville areas of Solano County that are 99 percent leased, with several more in planning stages.

“Given the competition for warehouse space, we can't build them fast enough, and the ones we do build are often leased before they are finished,” Ramos said.

Ramos said what tipped the scales in favor of this new facility was ample onsite tractor storage and truck parking, along with the height of the building, adequate power, and a high ratio of loading dock doors to the total square feet of the warehouse.

“Market demand is changing,” Ramos said. “With older facilities, some 50 percent of these sites were occupied by the structure. Today only 40 percent of the site is used for the building to allow to accommodate more trucks.”