TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – Amazon packages could be taking a road trip into a Traverse City facility if “Project Northstar” goes through, which is how plans are labeled that have been submitted to Grand Traverse County Construction Code and viewed by The Ticker.

In what would be Amazon’s first Michigan location that is north of Saginaw, the plans submitted for Project Northstar show a facility on US-31 west of Menards, across from West Commerce Drive in Blair Township. According to the article, Amazon isn’t officially named in the documents but details of the project include schematics for a “last-mile” delivery center with a fleet of delivery vans – a similar description for other Amazon facilities in the Midwest.

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“Last-mile” delivery is referred to as the movement of goods from a transportation hub to the final delivery destination, typically a personal residence. It’s designed to deliver the items to the end user as quickly as possible.

The property where the facility would go is represented by realtor James Schmuckal and has a “pending” sale for the price of $2,613,600. Schmuckal has confirmed that the property is “under contract and in the advance process of due diligence” but has declined to disclose the buyer’s identity.

The construction documents show a 75,150-square foot facility that is “designed to provide last-mile delivery of both parcel volume and heavy/bulky packages directly to the tenant’s customers” with products arriving at the facility “prepackaged in cardboard boxes and labeled for shipping within local neighborhoods.”

Plans show that packages will be taken out for delivery in either in-house vans or in the personal vehicles of contracted drivers – another indication of an Amazon program called “Amazon Flex” in which the company hires independent local drivers, similar to Uber or Lyft. Drawings include van parking, loading zones, sorting space, storage space and “associate” spaces which is a term that Amazon uses for its employees.

The number of jobs at the Traverse City facility could be into the hundreds depending on how many packages are going to be needed to be dealt with and delivered into the local community – but the majority of the personnel (95%) are reported to be part-time employees. Additionally, the viewed documents show that the facility as being staffed with the majority of the shifts occurring between 9:30 a.m. and 2:00 p.m.

The three firms listed on the construction documents have declined to say who the project is for but at least one of the firms, civil engineering firm Kimley-Horn, has been involved in multiple Amazon projects in the past.

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County building Official Bruce Remai says that Grand Traverse County Construction Code is waiting for an official address to be assigned to the property and also to receive full-size drawings and then after that, the plan review process will begin which will take about two to three weeks if everything is complete and there are no required changes or corrections. After the plans are approved, things move on to the permitting stage including land use, soil erosion, driveway, water, sewer and building permits.

According to an article in the Detroit Free Press in July of this year, they listed Amazon as having six Fulfillment Centers in Michigan, the largest being a facility at the old Michigan State Fairgrounds in Detroit – a center with five floors and 3.8 million square feet of space. The center also employs about 1,200 people, most of them Detroit residents.

Amazon is the second-largest employer in the United States, behind Walmart, with about 1.46 million employees worldwide. Their warehouse and delivery employees now make about $20.50 an hour on average.

The delivery of Amazon packages can take place through many routes and the regional hubs help packages get to customers more quickly. With partners across the United States, there are Amazon Flex drivers (drivers who use their own vehicles), Delivery Services Partners (DSPs) and external carrier partners like UPS and USPS. The journey of an Amazon package starts with a customer order; then the order gets picked and packed at a fulfillment center; from there the order is put on a line haul trailer and transported by truck to an Amazon Air site; once arriving at a sort center, it’s organized by zip code and loaded into a truck to be taken to a delivery station or partner facility like a post office; then the order is sorted according to its delivery route and it’s loaded onto a delivery vehicle and the customer is notified that the package is “out for delivery.”

Michigan News Source reached out to Amazon about the possible Traverse City center and received a reply back from Austin Stowe, Regional PR Specialist for Michigan, who said, “As of now, we don’t have anything to share on our end but I will keep you in mind if there are any official updates in that area.