Pembroke Park to get Amazon facility

Online retailer opening delivery site in town’s industrial park district

Another big Amazon center is poised to open in South Florida, the latest in an ever-growing list of facilities the e-commerce giant is adding to offer speedier delivery service to thousands of people.

The delivery station will be opening at an existing 269,000-square-foot warehouse in Pembroke Park at 3375 SW 24th St. It’s under renovation now within the town’s industrial park district.

“The new delivery station will power Amazon’s last-mile delivery capabilities to speed up deliveries for customers around Broward County,” Amazon spokesman Owen Torres said Wednesday.

He said packages are shipped to delivery stations from neighboring Amazon fulfillment and “sortation centers” and loaded into vehicles for final delivery to customers.

Amazon first approached Pembroke Park in July about opening in the town’s industrial district as a final distribution location before its fleet of vans hit the roads, according to town records released Wednesday.

Tractor-trailer trucks will deliver the items to the delivery station at night and be readied for delivery, which will begin at 9:30 a.m. About 1,000 trips are expected from the site, or 500 each way coming and going. It will serve a delivery area within a 60-minute drive, according to records.

The online retailer’s growth is exploding across Broward and Palm Beach counties:

It is seeking to build a distribution site in Village of Golf, which is south of Boynton Beach.

A distribution center opened in Boca Raton in late 2020.

A one-million-square-foot facility is under construction — the size of the Palm Beach Gardens mall — in an unincorporated part of Palm Beach County west of Jupiter.

The conversion of two warehouses in western Pompano Beach into a delivery station to more quickly get retail goods to customers.

It also now wants to install one of its massive fulfillment centers in western Sunrise with 1,000 full-time staffers. If approved, it would be Amazon’s fourth in South Florida and will service orders from cities across the country. The first opened in Opa-locka in 2019 in northern Miami Dade County. Two others are under construction in Homestead and western Palm Beach County.

Previously, Amazon had sought to place a center on 61 acres of Broward County-owned land near U.S. 27 and Sheridan Street near

Pembroke Pines, but lost the property to another company. Amazon said, however, that the new Sunrise site is not an alternate to the county-owned acreage.

“Amazon is in great demand,” said Kelly Smallridge, CEO of the Business Development Board of Palm Beach County. She doesn’t think need will slow down even as the pandemic progresses.

“The culture today is all about speed to market, instant gratification,” she said. “Everybody is about convenience today. Rather than go to multiple stores, they can find a wide array of products with the push of button and it’s there the next day. People today don’t want to go to four hardware stores to find a rake for their backyard.”

Pembroke Park Mayor Mayor Geoffrey Jacobs said the Amazon trucks will spill out onto Pembroke Road or Hallandale Beach Boulevard — both less than a mile from the site — and avoid residential neighborhoods, so he doesn’t anticipate traffic being an issue.

He said Amazon is expected to open the site sometime this summer.

COURTESY An Amazon delivery station will be opening in the tiny town of Pembroke Park in south Broward County.