Prime opportunity

Amazon packs Austin suburb with 1,000 new distribution jobs

Amazon is promising 1,000 new Austin-area jobs.

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E-commerce giant Amazon continues to rev up the economic engine in Austin’s suburbs. On June 15, the company said it’s setting up a fulfillment center in Pflugerville that’ll create about 1,000 full-time jobs.

At the 820,000-square-foot center, scheduled to open next year, employees will work alongside robots to select, pack, and ship small items like books, electronics, and toys. Pay at the center will start at $15 an hour. In North America, Amazon operates 110 fulfillment centers, or warehouses.

“Pflugerville is a bustling area, and the addition of this fulfillment center with over 1,000 jobs shows that Pflugerville is the new frontier in Central Texas,” Mayor Victor Gonzales said in an Amazon release.

Previous media reports indicated the project would be a 3.8 million-square-foot warehouse. The fulfillment center unveiled June 15 falls about 3 million square feet short of that.

The Pflugerville center, to be built along Pecan Street near the State Highway 130 toll road, is the third of its type in the Austin area to be announced recently by Amazon.

In June, Amazon revealed it’s establishing distribution “stations” in Buda and Round Rock. Each location — more than 300,000 square feet in Buda and more 440,000 square feet in Round Rock — will generate hundreds of full-time and part-time jobs.

Amazon’s delivery stations enable so-called “last mile” service as part of the company’s order fulfillment process. Packages are hauled to delivery stations from Amazon fulfillment centers. Those packages then are sorted and finally loaded onto vehicles for delivery to customers. Amazon operates more than 150 delivery stations across the U.S.

Amazon already operates an 855,000-square-foot fulfillment center in San Marcos that employs more than 2,200 full-time workers, and it employs hundreds of people at offices in the Capital City. In addition, it owns Austin-based Whole Foods Market.

The Seattle-based company employs 20,000 people across Texas. Amazon says it has pumped $9 billion into the state’s economy.

technology

Take A Bike

City of Austin gears up to make permanent changes to Congress Avenue

Photo courtesy of AustinTexas.gov

Congress Avenue's undergoing a transformation.

Driving down Congress Avenue has looked a lot different this summer. Not only are the throngs of traffic gone and buildings empty of workers, but a series of temporary bike lanes have been installed along the corridor.

In May, more than a 1,000 residents signed a petition asking to install the bike lanes along "the Main Street of Texas." The following month, the Austin City Council passed the measure and announced the creation of temporary bike lanes along Congress, between Riverside Drive and 11th Street.

With Austin battling COVID-19, the bike lanes were a way "to improve safety and to address COVID-19 risk-based guidelines to ensure enough physical distance for all people using [Congress] Avenue and the Ann Richards Bridge," the city said at the time.

Earlier this week, the City of Austin announced the bike lanes will become permanent. The traffic cones and plastic markers installed to designate the lanes will be replaced with flexible delineator posts and parking stops to create a physical barrier between cyclists and vehicles. Driveways and on-street parking will remain accessible to cars, notes a news release.

Congress Avenue's new bike lanes promote access to alternative modes of transportation while easing traffic on downtown sidewalks. With cyclists and scooter riders using dedicate lanes, pedestrians and nearby businesses are better able to take advantage of the sidewalk and maintain social distancing guidelines, the city notes in its announcement.

Along with the bike lanes, the city also announced the creation of dedicated left and right turn signals at high-traffic intersections, a move that will hopefully stop the soul-crushing feeling of cruising down Congress only to get stopped behind someone attempting to make a left-hand turn across three lanes of traffic. In addition, improved pedestrian crossings and signage will also be installed.

These improvements are part of the Congress Avenue Urban Design Initiative, a project funded in 2012 and launched in 2017 with the goal of improving the downtown corridor.

Construction on the permanent bike lanes is already underway, and the city has projected a four-to-six week timeline for completion.

downtown transportation