Amazon bringing Rochester-area facility online, plans new development

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Amazon has finally opened its sortation facility on Shepard Road in Ogden, three years after it was ready for occupancy, and is now planning to build yet another operations center across the street.

Construction on the 280,000-square-foot sortation facility at 90 Shepard Rd. was essentially completed in 2022 but the opening was delayed, first by supply chain and ecommerce slowdowns, then by equipment issues.

But operations officially began this afternoon at the building, which cost $45.6 million to construct and features $30 million in high-tech equipment, some of it proprietary, according to Ogden Town Supervisor Mike Zale.

“It is incredible inside and their safety standards are impeccable,” said Zale, who toured the building on Tuesday.

The sortation facility is home to the final stages of Amazon‘s distribution chain, ensuring efficient delivery of packages. Amazon says there will be at least 150 employees, but Zale said he was told the site could have up to 300 workers.

ROC5, as it is known within Amazon’s Rochester network, received $18.2 million in tax incentives from the County of Monroe Industrial Development Agency. That funding was tied to job creation, and Amazon had until the end of this year to start fulfilling those requirements.

Zale said the ecommerce giant has already been satisfying requirements of the 15-year PILOT agreement.

Amazon has created its own little village along the border of Gates and Ogden. The 2.6 million-square-foot fulfillment center at 2600 Manitou Rd. in Gates — about the size of 45 football fields — employs more than 1,000 and processes around 700,000 outbound items every day.

Now the company is in the preliminary planning stages for another facility in Ogden, across Shepard Road from ROC5. Amazon is working with property owner Acquest Development, which is headquartered in the Buffalo suburb of Williamsville.

Amazon has not specified how it will figure into its distribution network but Zale said the town has been told it will be used for same-day delivery operations.

“We’re excited by the prospect of opening a new operations facility in Ogden,” Amazon spokesperson Marc Heintzman said recently. “The planning process around this project is still in the very early stages, and we look forward to sharing more in the coming months.”

Zale said Amazon does not intend to seek tax exemptions through a PILOT agreement, which he appreciates since the additional traffic and policing needs tied to the new ventures stretch the town’s resources.

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