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After a high-profile pullback that left some developers in the lurch and other warehouses leased but sitting empty, is Amazon planning an about-face on its footprint contraction?

In a blog post on the company’s website Doug Herrington, head of Amazon’s Worldwide Amazon Stores arm covering its fulfillment operations and online stores, wrote “we have plans to double the number of [same-day delivery] sites in the coming years.”

Amazon spent much of the last year in a high-profile pullback from the huge logistics expansion it undertook in the first two years of the pandemic, when it saw its headcount and operations double, as Americans engaged in a pullback of their own from online shopping as the pandemic wound down and energy costs soared thanks to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Local casualties of that pullback included delivery centers in Milford, Dedham, Everett, Randolph and Mansfield, which Amazon closed in August 2022, and its brand-new, million-square-foot delivery center on the site of a former Showcase Cinemas theater in Revere whose opening was placed on indefinite hold as it was completed this summer. An Amazon spokesperson told Banker & Tradesman in June that the latter facility, which Amazon owns instead of leasing it from a developer, “remains in our future plans.”

In his blog post, Herrington made the case that the company’s same-day delivery network was still key to its future, saying “our Same-Day Delivery network is not only our fastest way to get products to customers, it is also one of our lowest cost ways.”

The company, Herrington said, is also managing the huge costs associated with running a same-day delivery service by revamping how its distribution network is organized and rolling out advances in the software it uses to predict when customers will want certain products in different parts of the country.