Amazon fulfillment center coming to former DuPont site

Amazon and the city delivered a big announcement to the community last week.

Oakley officials revealed that the online retail giant will occupy a 150,000-square-foot building at the evolving Contra Costa Logistics Center at the former DuPont chemical manufacturing facility site on Bridgehead Road.

“This is huge, and the site will immediately become one of the largest employers in east Contra Costa County,” said Mayor Kevin Romick. “We have been working for years on getting the site ready for this exact type of job-producing development. All those long, tiring efforts are coming to fruition.”

Amazon spokeswoman Eileen Hards declined to say when the company plans to move in or how many employees will be hired, but she did say the company is excited to come to Oakley. It’s expected that the e-commerce behemoth will use the building as a fulfillment center.

A formal announcement and ribbon-cutting ceremony are slated for early October, city officials said.

“We are excited to be investing in the City of Oakley with a new delivery station to provide efficient delivery for customers, and provide hundreds of job opportunities for the talented local workforce,” Hards said.

Amazon is the first named tenant scheduled to occupy a portion of NorthPoint Development’s eventual five-building site — with 2 million square feet of space — that broke ground in January for a variety of light industrial and logistics uses on a portion of the 375.7-acre property at 6,000 Bridgehead Road, north of the BNSF rail tracks and just south of Lauritzen Yacht Harbor.

All five buildings, ranging between 150,000 and 642,960 square feet, should be completed within four years.

Nancy Marquez-Suarez, assistant to the city manager, confirmed that the city is aware that there are tenants poised to occupy an over-400,000-square-foot building that is nearing completion, and Amazon is contemplating another on-site building as well.

“There is some confidentiality that needs to be maintained at this point, as was the case with Amazon,” she said.

All told, the center is expected to be an economic boon for the city and the region at large.

An original, independent project fiscal and economic impact analysis concluded that the development could result in nearly 2,850 full- and part-time jobs in the county; yield a net Oakley General Fund surplus of approximately $388,400 annually at build out; and contribute $420,000 per year to the fire district.

The development site is the former home of the DuPont Antioch Plant, a chemical manufacturing facility that produced chlorofluorocarbons, fuel-additive antiknock compounds and titanium dioxide between 1955 and 1998.

The California Department of Toxic Substances Control Site Mitigation and Restoration Program guided a two-phase remediation effort on the land that began in 2003.

All remediation to logistic center development areas are complete, city officials confirmed this week.

It’s expected that five buildings will occupy 143.3 acres at the southwest portion of the site, with the remaining 232.4 acres remaining natural.

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