Amid Bookstore Rollback, Amazon's Loveland Buy Reaffirms Priorities In Colorado
Amazon is plowing ahead with yet another distribution center on Colorado’s Front Range as it shuts down its brick-and-mortar bookstores across the country, including four in metro Denver.
An affiliate of the e-commerce giant purchased a parcel of land near the Northern Colorado Regional Airport for $9.4M, according to reporting by BizWest, indicating further interest in establishing a distribution network that can quickly reach smaller but growing cities like Fort Collins, Loveland and Greeley.
The move signals Amazon’s overall return to its original business model, shipping products purchased online, and away from using traditional physical retail to reach customers in shopping malls across the U.S.
It also represents a deepening of Amazon’s commitment and interest in the broader Front Range. The company spent several years setting up one distribution center after the next in metro Denver, with behemoth fulfillment centers in Aurora and Thornton and smaller delivery facilities scattered around the metro area.
The company at the end of 2021 announced plans to hire 2,700 more people at its four-story distribution hub in Colorado Springs, the clearest testament to its interest in reaching populations outside the Denver-Boulder metroplex. And with this latest buy, Amazon seeks to add another 2.4M SF in the northern third of the state, adding to an existing smaller center it operates in Loveland.
With two universities and a handful of community colleges, plus serving as the headquarters for companies like OtterBox, Water Pik and Woodward, northern Colorado’s population has grown rapidly along with the rest of the Front Range in the last decade. The two counties that make up Northern Colorado, Larimer and Weld, grew by 20% and 30%, respectively, from 2010 to 2020, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
That kind of population growth was a driver behind Amazon’s December 2021 decision to name Denver one of its five-hour cities, where Prime customers can expect delivery on certain products within a five-hour window.
Further expanding its physical distribution network allows Amazon to more effectively deliver on that promise to more parts of the state, as well as across state lines, into another university town in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
In keeping with its modus operandi, Amazon has been tight-lipped about its newest Colorado location, but a local developer told BizWest that his company had been working on the land deal for four years, three of which were in direct contact with the buyer.
He further explained that Amazon is in the process of developing the site, which is known to be a lengthy process that can sometimes draw pushback from the community, as it did last summer when public criticism led the Arvada City Council to vote against the establishment of a distribution center in that city, citing traffic concerns.
