Amazon buys Pasco industrial park, will invest $150 million in new facility

PASCO COUNTY — Amazon has acquired Eagle Industrial Park in Pasco County and will invest $150 million to build a 517,220-square-foot robotic sortation center that will employ 500.

The Seattle-based online retail behemoth considers the robotic sorting stations as middle-mile facilities. These are facilities where products from vendors and fulfilment center are separated and sent out to other centers or third parties for final delivery.

The industrial park, which is off State Road 52 about two miles from Interstate 75, was part of the county’s Ready Site Program. This is a program that, according to the county, prepares “properties for industrial development and create a portfolio of project-ready sites for targeted industries.”

This particular park has been on the market for about a year and half.

Bill Cronin, the president and CEO of Pasco EDC, says in a press release announcing the sale that the program “was created to help big projects like this close and locate quickly and that’s exactly what they are doing.”

This sale is the second high-dollar property deal in the same general vicinity in recent months. In December, an 875-acre parcel on the southeast corner of State Road 52 and Interstate 275 sold for $52 million. That property will be developed as a mixed-use development that will be part of the Connected City overlay district.

Amazon, as can be imagined, has a massive distribution system that includes delivery stations, sortation centers, receive centers and specialty centers, according to its website. That network has been growing in Florida in recent years as the company tries to meet the needs of a booming population.

According to MWPVL International, a Montreal-based global supply and logistics consulting firm that tracks Amazon, the company currently has 41 Amazon delivery stations open or planned for Florida along with 12 fulfilment centers — totaling 7.4 million square feet — being added and three sortation centers totaling 1.07 million square feet. This includes a 633,000-square-foot fulfillment center being built on roughly 82 acres in Temple Terrace, northeast of Tampa.

The company also opened a 120,000-square-foot fulfillment center in North Port, Sarasota County in 2020 and a delivery station in East Naples last year. And it recently bought 25.5 acres on South Dale Mabry in Tampa to build another delivery center.

According to Amazon, it has invested more than $18 billion in the state and created more than 52,000 jobs in Florida.

This story has been updated to reflect the correct price.