WA: Amazon Warehouse in Snohomish Co. to Be One of U.S.'s Largest of 2022; to Generate 1,000 Jobs

A 2.8 million-square-foot Amazon.com Inc. warehouse under construction in Snohomish County, Wash., will be sixth-largest industrial project to be completed this year in the U.S., according to a report by CommercialSearch. Panattoni Development Co. is developing the five-story structure, called Project Roxy, on a 75-acre parcel of land near Arlington Municipal Airport.

An email newsletter by the Economic Alliance Snohomish County says the distribution facility is expected to be finished in the third quarter and generate 1,000 jobs. The project will have approximately 1,250 parking stalls, 51 truck loading docks and 314 trailer parking stalls.

Seattle-based Amazon is associated with seven of the nation's 10 largest warehouse projects under construction this year, either as the owner or lessee. The largest is a 4.3 million-square-foot Tesla-owned facility in Austin, Texas. Second on the list is a 3.8 million-square-foot Amazon distribution center by Hillwood Development Co. in Detroit. (View the CommercialSearch study here.)

The Arlington project alone accounts for around a fifth of the Puget Sound area’s 9.9 million square feet of industrial space in the construction pipeline this year. Overall, the Seattle market ranks 14th nationally in industrial construction in 2022.

All that warehouse space coming online may not be enough to satiate demand, however. The local industrial real estate market was the most expensive in the country by sales price in the first two months of the year, and ranked fourth for all of 2021.

Sale prices could continue to surge. A recently released report by Colliers predicted 11 million square feet of space will be snapped up by tenants in 2022, similar to 2021’s record year. 
E-commerce has been one of the biggest drivers of demand for industrial space, according to the report. The biggest occupier of these structures is Amazon, which has leased or purchased the 16 largest industrial buildings delivered in the U.S. last year. The structures ranged in size from 2.5 million to 3.8 million square feet.