91ÊÓƵ

Amazon has purchased the land it plans to use for a distribution center in Eugene.

Amazon.com Services LLC paid $2 million on Dec. 26 for a lot along Oregon Route 99 where the company intends to build a large e-commerce center. The sale was first reported by Eugene Weekly and confirmed by The Register-Guard, which also obtained a copy of the deed.

The development plan includes offices, an employee training center, a warehouse, a distribution facility and fleet storage with 370 parking spaces on the 84-acre lot bordering Route 99, Eugene Airport and Awbrey Lane.

According to an application submitted to the Lane Regional Air Protection Agency (LRAPA), the distribution center will add 2,592 trips per day to Route 99. The developers estimate that fewer than 100 of the daily trips will occur between 7 and 8 a.m. and between 4 and 5 p.m., according to the city of Eugene website.

Amazon’s proposal will permanently alter 6.75 acres of wetlands through infill and removal of soil. Developers have proposed purchasing Amazon Prairie wetland mitigation credits from the city of Eugene. Public comment closed Jan. 2 and was being reviewed by the Oregon Department of State Lands, which is scheduled to respond to the application by March 2.

As a condition of the LRAPA permit, Amazon committed to using at least 25 percent electric vehicles in year one, at least 40 percent in year five and at least 70 percent in year 10.

Several permit applications have indicated the facility will be 318,000 square feet. That is significantly smaller than perhaps Eugene’s largest industrial campus — the defunct Hynix chip factory that covers 1.2 million square feet.

Also, by comparison, the Eugene development will be a fraction of the size of Amazon’s Woodburn facility, which opened late last year and is billed as the largest building in Oregon at 3.5 million square feet.

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in The Register-Guard and then was distributed on the USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect.