When Amazon’s new fulfillment centre opens in Rocky View County (RVC) at the end of August, it will provide more than 1,000 people with new jobs, according to Vibhore Arora, Amazon’s director of regional operations. Local officials and media were given a tour of the 600,000-square-foot facility June 12. “It’s good for the region to have diversity. It’s exciting to watch the plans that we made as a council 10 or 12 years ago to attract businesses like this (come to fruition),” said RVC Reeve Greg Boehlke. “I don’t think a company like Amazon would come to Alberta, period, if they didn’t think there was a market here. It’s a good sign of growth…that we have people willing to invest in the community.” Boehlke said the County’s proximity to a major highway, airport and metropolitan centres makes it an attractive place for companies to establish businesses and benefits those who live in the surrounding communities. “People who come from the City of Calgary or the City of Airdrie to work in RVC, take that pay cheque home and spend it in that municipality, for the most part,” he said. Amazon announced Oct. 26, 2017 it would build the facility in RVC, east of Balzac – the company’s first fulfillment centre in western Canada. Construction began in September 2017, with Dawson Wallace Construction Ltd. as the construction manager. James Fried, project manager, said the build was hampered by the long winter, as the region continued to receive snow into March. “While people were shovelling their average driveway and sidewalk of their homes, we had a crew of about 40 people – and at its peak, 70 people – pushing snow 600 feet and clearing about 17 acres of roof on this facility to keep the schedule,” he said. The building has 11 metre (m) high ceilings, and Fried said the amount of pre-cast panels used in the walls would fill three soccer fields. The construction includes 2,212 metric tonnes of steel – equivalent to 850 Ford F-150 pickup trucks. A rainwater collection system can hold two-and-a-half Olympic-sized pools of water. The building sits on a 2.5 m thick concrete slab, according to Fried. One of the main features of the new facility is the automated material handling system, supplied by Honeywell Intelligrated. Steve McElweenie, vice president and general manager, said the company began work on designing and installing the system in March. “It’s going to allow the Amazon operators to pick, sort, pack and ship online orders quickly,” he said. “It’s designed to increase throughput and accuracy.” The system includes a 114 m long routing sorter that moves at 3.3 metres per second (m/sec) and a 539 m long shipping sorter that moves at 2.1 m/sec. Items are stored on a 21,600 square metre storage system, according to McElweenie. According to Boehlke, the addition of the new fulfillment centre will help RVC move to the kind of assessment split he said it desires. Currently, the County’s assessment split is 73 per cent residential and 27 per cent non-residential with non-residential properties paying approximately 50 per cent of the County’s taxes, he added. “Council has consciously made a decision to have more non-residential in our county. We still need residential to make a viable community, for sure,” he said. “We made a decision a number of years ago to take advantage of the desirable location we’re in.”
