A single company plans to lease the entire new 1-million-square-foot building at The Silos at Sanders Farm.
John J. Watkins, The Times
Amazon is leasing a gargantuan 1-million-square-foot building in The Silos at Sanders Farm off Interstate 65 that will be its second distribution center in Merrillville.
Amazon signs have gone up on the side of the building at 9850 Mississippi St. and are now visible from Mississippi Street and Interstate 65. Developer Crow Holdings announced on social media Amazon was leasing Sanders Farm Building 2 for use as an inbound cross-dock, or IXD, facility, which receives products from vendors and ships them to Amazon fulfillment centers. An IXD facility does not ship orders directly to customers.
Dallas-based Crow Holdings developed the 195-acre Silos at Sanders Farm business park just off Interstate 65, winning the Industrial Speculative Development of the Year-Large Scale award from NAIOP Chicago, the local chapter of the Commercial Real Estate Development Association, for the building Amazon will occupy.
The 40-foot tall distribution center, with 1,930 feet of frontage along I-65, has been fully leased to the Seattle-based e-commerce giant Amazon, along with an 18.48-acre industrial outdoor storage yard, according to Crow Holdings. The massive building has 79 loading docks, 527 car parking spaces and 765 trailer spaces. It occupies a 79.45-acre site just off the highway.
At least $90 million has been invested in the building so far, Merrillville Ward 6 Councilman Shawn Pettit said. The development is expected to bring hundreds of jobs, but the exact number has not been communicated yet.
"Amazon is the world's largest company, hands down," Pettit said. "To have two Amazon facilities in our community is amazing. The economic impact of this is going to be huge."
Amazon paved over the lot north of the massive building as a staging ground for the semi-trailer trucks that will move its products.
"There will be a lot of trucks," Pettit said.
The 1-million-square-foot building was constructed on spec, meaning no tenant was lined up before the developer broke ground.
ARCO/Murray served as the general contractor while CAGE handled the civil engineering.
Since Building 2 was built at Silos at Sanders Farm, developers announced a larger 1.2 million-square-foot warehouse building for John Deere off I-65 in Lowell that will be longer than the Willis Tower laid on its side.
"It's since helped create more demand for huge buildings," Pettit said. "It's pretty impressive. It's a good size."
Toronto-based real estate company Avison Young closed on the industrial lease, representing Crow Holdings. Seattle-based KBC Advisors, which has long handled real estate transactions for Amazon, represented the tenant.
The lease at Silos at Sanders Farms is believed to be one of the largest industrial leases in Chicagoland in recent years and likely the largest ever signed in Northwest Indiana up to this point.
Crow Holdings originally developed two buildings in AmeriPlex at the Crossroads and then looked across I-65 to build Silos at Sanders Farm, one of many new business parks and distribution centers to spring up along I-65 in Northwest Indiana in recent years. It has constructed more than 2 million square feet of Class A space in Northwest Indiana.
Building 2 at Silos at Sanders Farm is one of many new distribution facilities to pop up in Northwest Indiana in recent years, including Domino's, Dawn Foods, Big Lots, Midwest Truck & Auto Parts, Quality Past and several cold storage facilities. It's close to interstates 65, 80, 90 and 94 and can serve a third of the country's population with two-day delivery.
Pettit said the second Amazon facility likely would help draw more logistics firms to town, since Amazon is considered the gold standard of logistics.
"This is going to do a lot for economic development," he said. "It speaks volumes to what we've done here in town."
Amazon did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In 2021, Amazon opened a $30 million, 190,000-square-foot delivery station in the AmeriPlex at the Crossroads business park along Broadway. The delivery station is the last step in the distribution of products to customers, taking packages on the "final mile" to customers' doorsteps.
Amazon had operated a temporary delivery station off I-65 in Gary until the construction in Merrillville was complete and had planned to open a second Northwest Indiana delivery station in Valparaiso, but that project never came to fruition.
An inbound cross-dock facility would instead move products from independent sellers on Amazon to the e-commerce giant's warehouses across the country.
Town Council President Rick Bella said Amazon's original delivery station would stay open even with a bigger warehouse coming online, since it serves a completely different function in Amazon's supply chain.
"It's a different type of facility," he said. "It creates jobs and economic development. We're very pleased Amazon took over the building and signed a long-term lease. It's going to add to the tax base and bring high-paying jobs."
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