iStock photo
Amazon officials plan to close down operations at five last-mile delivery stations in the Boston area, but the future of those properties is unclear.
The company’s warehouses in Milford, Dedham, Everett, Randolph and Mansfield will shut down, company spokesperson Caitlin McLaughlin said in an email to Banker & Tradesman, with workers being offered jobs in other similar last-mile locations elsewhere in the metro area.
“These facilities provide upgraded amenities, including increased on-site parking, larger operational spaces, and better breakrooms with open market vending,” McLaughlin said.
McLaughlin attributed the move to a desire to “upgrade” the company’s facilities, but the company has also embarked on an effort to trim its physical footprint, with Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky telling investors during the company’s first-quarter earnings call that Amazon had discovered it had invested in too much warehouse and delivery space during the early days of the pandemic when its e-commerce sales were growing by leaps and bounds.
Amazon leases four of the five warehouses from familiar names in the local commercial real estate world, according to public records. The Davis Cos. redeveloped an Everett produce-sorting warehouse into the Amazon delivery center there in 2020. Amazon’s Randolph delivery center was built on the site of a former Bob’s Discount Furniture store owned by Atlantic Management Corp., which subsequently sold the property to a Hawaii investment management firm for $44 million in 2021. The Dedham delivery center is owned by an affiliate of AEW Capital Management, while the Milford facility is owned by an affiliate of Cabot Properties and the Mansfield property is owned by an affiliate of The Seyon Group.
It’s not clear when Amazon will pull out of the five facilities and McLaughlin did not respond to follow-up questions about the company’s plans for the properties, including whether it planned to sublease them. The facilities are generally between 200,000 and 300,000 square feet in size.
