Amazon will bring “hundreds” of jobs to Whiteland, the company said Tuesday.
Amazon officials released more information about its planned fulfillment center in Whiteland.
The fulfillment center, 19 Bob Glidden Boulevard, in the Whiteland Exchange Business Park off Interstate 65, will be the E-commerce giant’s sixth fulfillment center in the Indianapolis-area, joining two facilities in Plainfield and one each in Whitestown, Indianapolis and Greenfield. The facility will be the second Amazon facility in Johnson County, after the company opened a receive center in late 2019 in Greenwood.
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Employees at the new Whiteland site will focus on picking, packing and shipping some of the larger items Amazon sells, such as mattresses, kayaks, grills and exercise equipment, said Andre Woodson, company spokesperson.
The 530,000-square-foot warehouse will employ “hundreds,” Woodson said. Job numbers are not finalized and hiring has not yet begun, he said. Hiring usually begins about a month or two prior to a facility’s opening date, which has also not been set, he said.
A slightly larger, 630,000-square-foot fulfillment center in nearby Greenfield will employ between 800 and 1,000 employees, according to Amazon and building permits. Other facilities, such as the Indianapolis location, were opened with similar “hundreds” of jobs estimates.
Full-time picking and packing jobs will start at the company-wide minimum wage of $15. Amazon will also hire for other higher-wage roles at the site in human resources, operations management, safety, security, finance and information technology, Woodson said.
All employees will have access to benefits, including full medical, vision and dental insurance as well as a 401(k) with 50% company match, starting on day one, Woodson said. The company also offers paid maternity and paternity leave and other benefits for growing families, he said.
Amazon announcements have abounded in recent years and the company has become one of the largest employers in the state. Currently, Amazon employs about 12,000 people at facilities throughout central Indiana and in Jeffersonville, Woodson said. That number will grow once the Whiteland warehouse opens and the Greenfield facility adds more jobs.
Though Amazon is not releasing specific job numbers yet, any number of jobs in the hundreds will cement Amazon’s place as the largest employer in Johnson County. Once the Greenwood facility reaches a full staff of 1,250 by the end of the year, Amazon will be the county’s largest employer. The Greenwood facility is up to 1,000 employees, Woodson said.
Besides retail, which is hard to track, Center Grove Schools and Camp Atterbury are the county’s largest employers with about 1,100 employees each. The next largest manufacturing business in the county is Ulta, which has under 600 employees.
Attracting Amazon is huge for Whiteland, said Norm Gabehart, town manager.
The fulfillment center will occupy the first speculative building at the Whiteland Exchange. The industrial business park, which will eventually house five warehouses, is being developed by Jones Development, of Kansas City, Mo.
Jones invested $15 million to build the speculative warehouse Amazon will occupy, and pledged to invest $2.5 million in water system upgrades for the town over the course of development at the business park.
The move to Whiteland will give Amazon direct access to I-65, which stretches from Canada to the Gulf Shore. With Whiteland’s central location on I-65 and access to a solid workforce, Gabehart hopes to see more companies take a cue from Amazon.
“For a global company like Amazon to come here, it solidifies our existence as a town and location that can promote economic development to this level,” Gabehart said. “It is huge for companies to understand that Whiteland is a great place to be.”
Amazon’s choice to locate in Whiteland was a strategic effort, allowing it to reach customers faster, Woodson said.
“There are a lot of contributing factors that go into our thought process as we decide where to place a new fulfillment center. Most importantly, we want to make sure a fulfillment center is placed as close to the customer as possible to ensure we can offer a great Prime service and fast shipping speeds to customers — we found all those factors in Whiteland,” he said.
Road improvements and housing developments were already underway in the area before the town knew of Amazon’s desire to locate there, Gabehart said.
Lots for more than 700 new homes have been platted in subdivisions throughout the town, and construction is already underway in several neighborhoods, he said.
Learning from other communities’ growing pains, Gabehart said the town has developed a plan for future growth that he hopes will minimize traffic congestion. The town is working with developers to structure traffic patterns in the area to limit left-hand turns near the exchange.
Three additional roundabouts and a bypass from Bob Glidden Boulevard to County Road 400 West are planned as development at the business park continues. Part of the bypass project will be the county’s second railroad overpass, Gabehart said.
The town plans to seek help from developers to make the road improvements possible, he said.
