The new Amazon specialty site receiver center at Silos at Sanders Farm represents the best of economic development in Lake County, if not the state, to hear Merrillville officials tell it.
The 1 million-square-foot warehouse, open since January 15, now makes Merrillville the “epicenter of economic development,” and if Councilman Shawn Pettit could go through the process of building it again, he wouldn’t hesitate. Pettit, along with other town dignitaries, were given a tour of the building after they officially cut the ribbon on the warehouse Wednesday morning.
“Crow Holdings is one of the best developers we’ve ever worked with. Everything (Crow Holdings Industrial Managing Director) Matt Kurucz says, he completes,” Pettit said. “I would do this every day and twice on Sunday.
“This is a multigenerational park for years to come, and we look forward to prosperous times ahead.”
The specialty center isn’t a typical warehouse, Site Leader Mary Beth Klippel said, but a fulfillment center for small and medium-sized sellers, of which there are 5,500 in Indiana. Products are shipped to the site at 9850 Mississippi St., where they are first directed onto a conveyor belt and examined via laser for its weight and size; a second machine combines the shipper’s information with the customer’s information and stamps on a red sticker.
At the end of the line, employees physically scan the packages by hand and affix the final label before it gets sent off to shipping, Klippel said. The process takes about 7 minutes total, and employees handle 50 packages per minute, she said.
Employees handle glass and liquid products in another area, she said; another department breaks up packages with mulitiples of one product and disperses it for two-day shipping. Packages finally end up in the transfer-out department, where loaders “T-stack” shipments into the trucks as if they were playing Jenga, making sure nothing is going to fall out of place and get damaged before its arrival.
“We ship to five different fulfillment centers: Two in Indiana, one in Tennessee, one in California and one in New Jersey,” she said. “Here, we process hundreds of thousands of packages a week, and the product from here isn’t put online until it reaches the fulfillment center.”
For employees, the Human Resource department, Education Department, Safety Department, and Wellness Zone are all up front for easy access, and emergency checkpoints are marked around the warehouse so that when there’s a severe weather event like a tornado, employees go to their assigned checkpoint to be counted before heading to shelter in the warehouse’s basement, Klippel said.
Merrillville Town Council President Rick Bella, D-5, agreed with Pettit that working with Crow Holdings has been nothing short of “amazing” and that he too is looking forward to the next warehouse project coming at 73rd Avenue and I-65.
“For Amazon to have two warehouses in our town (the first one is at the Ameriplex) is a tribute to Merrillville,” Bella said. “It shows we’re open for business.”
The warehouse has brought $25.5 billion in state infrastructure and $25 billion in tax revenue, Klippel added. There are 500 full-time employees working at the warehouse, she said.
Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
