Amazon is looking to build an air cargo center at the Boise Airport.
The Seattle-based company is looking to lease 151,000 square feet of land, or a little over three acres, to construct a building that would be about 31,000 square feet. If the Boise City Council approves the project, the company could eventually expand the lease to four acres.
Amazon would pay the city $60,000 a year in rent for at least 35 years, although the annual amount would go up each as adjusted to the Consumer Price Index percentage increase. The city would also get landing fees for each cargo jet, as well as parking ramp fees.
The company said it would use the facility to load and unload trucks and trailers, store the vehicles and make service repairs to inbound and outbound aircraft.
In order for the project to move forward, the Boise City Council must agree to spend $22 million in upgrades at the airport. Those capital improvements would include building a new access road, a new taxiway and a ramp. That work would last through the end of 2023.
That money would come from the airport’s capital fund and be eligible for reimbursement from the Federal Aviation Administration.
The city also expects it could garner income once the facility is built from other tenants wanting to build on adjacent property.
Amazon expects it would initially create 500 full-time and part-time jobs at a starting pay of $15 an hour.
“The project ads jobs and helps connect our small, medium and large businesses to the world in a bigger way,” Boise Mayor Lauren McLean said in a statement. “Growing our transportation infrastructure like this is critical to Boiseans being able to take advantage of opportunities wherever they may be.”
Amazon already has two other large facilities in the state, both west of Boise located off of Interstate-84.
The largest is a fulfillment center in Nampa that measures 650,000 square feet and employs 2,500 people. The other is a delivery station in Meridian that measures 140,000 square feet that is part of the company’s “last mile” operation to deliver packages directly to customers’ doorsteps in Amazon’s familiar blue vans.
The company is also in the process of opening what it calls a “sortation building” of about 278,000 square feet in the Boise Gateway Industrial Park.
