The big 1.3 million square foot warehouse next to UPS in the Visalia Industrial Park is now only a few months from completion.

Construction started last September and the contractor who is building Visalia’s largest industrial warehouse said they were building it for e-commerce giant Amazon. But Amazon hadn’t made it known themselves until this week.

“We are expecting this fulfillment center to launch in early fall of this year,” an Amazon spokesperson confirmed.

The new Amazon site is expected to create over 1,000 full time jobs, paying at least $15 per hour with benefits packages.

Job postings online this week list start dates between April 1, 2021 and June 28, 2021.

Having a fulfillment center means Visalia will capture a portion of state and local taxes Amazon pays, including payroll taxes, property taxes, state income taxes, and gross receipts taxes, which totaled about $1.6 billion in 2019.

And those numbers may be underselling Amazon’s effect to the local economy as online sales continue to grow exponentially.

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