Scott County pitches itself as prime location for Amazon HQ

Shakopee Valley News

Scott County is making a pitch to be the prime location for Amazon’s second headquarters.

Amazon made national news earlier this month when the company announced plans for a second headquarter facility, equal in size and stature to the Seattle location. Amazon invested billions and billions of dollars into Seattle’s economy and infrastructure with its first headquarters, and states and cities across the nation are preparing bids to entice Amazon to move into their communities, including Minnesota, according to Gov. Mark Dayton.

If Minnesota were chosen, the question is where the facility would be located and what communities have the viability — and space — to sustain it.

First Stop Shop — an offshoot of the Scott County Community Development Agency, which is dedicated to bringing businesses to Scott County — thinks the southwest metro area might be the answer.

Savage Mayor Janet Williams wrote a letter to Amazon to support the facility coming to Shakopee or Elko New Market as part of a campaign on the behalf of First Stop Shop. The letter details the benefits of moving the headquarters to Scott County, including the high median income and the existing Amazon fulfillment center in Shakopee.

“We also believe this site offers Amazon a unique opportunity that other sites will not provide — an opportunity to design and shape the site, the city, and the area as a planned community which fits Amazon’s needs, rather than Amazon designing its facility and surroundings to fit into a developed setting,” according to the letter.

The fulfillment center in Shakopee has 2,000 employees, 5,000 robots and is 850,000 square feet, the equivalent of 14 football fields. The center has been operational since 2016.

With such close proximity to the Twin Cities area, the southwest metro could fulfill exactly what Amazon is looking for in a second headquarters.

Amazon prefers to be near a metropolitan area with at least 1 million people, a stable and business-friendly environment, an urban or downtown campus similar layout to the Seattle location and a development-prepped site, according to a news release.

As of 2010, the Twin Cities area had more than 3.5 million people. Space could prove a difficult if Amazon wanted to move into downtown Minneapolis or St. Paul as the Seattle headquarters has 33 buildings and is 8.1 million square feet — that’s a ton of space, at about 185 acres.

According to the First Stop Shop website, about 270 acres of property are available in the Dean Lakes Development area in Shakopee near Highway 169 and County Road 83. Another 84 acres are up for grabs in Shakopee near Horizon Drive and Muhlenhardt Road, 117 acres in Jordan near 195th Street and 248 acres in Prior Lake near County Road 8 and County Road 87.

The Twin Cities are no stranger to headquartering companies — Target Corporation, PepsiAmericas, Xcel Energy, Ameriprise Financial and more call Minneapolis home. A number of companies also are located in suburban areas, including Land O’Lakes, Life Time Fitness, Dairy Queen, General Mills, 3M Company, Best Buy and many more.

Shakopee alone has companies like Entrust Datacard, Seagate Technologies and Emerson Rosemount with a strong technological workforce, Shakopee Planning and Development Director Michael Kerski said.

“I think there are sites that could hold that amount of square footage,” Kerski said. “The region has the skill set that they’re looking for, it’s just a question of what Amazon is looking for as far as a site.”

Amazon is familiar with the area due to the facilities already built here, Kerski said.

“They know the Twin Cities,” he said.

The competition for the facility, however, will be fierce.

Amazon will invest $5 billion in the headquarters and create 50,000 jobs and cities like Chicago, Toronto, San Diego, Dallas, Denver, Boston and about 45 more in addition to the Twin Cities are preparing aggressive bids for the facility, according to a Business Insider article.

“It’s anyone’s game at this point,” Kerski said. “No one knows how they make their decisions.”

Whether or not Minnesota is chosen, one thing is certain — Amazon has a lot of options.