Ives said the City Council and city staff have worked for “over a year” with representatives of Amazon.com Inc. and industrial developer Prologis to bring the Seattle-based Internet retailer to Tracy.
“We have worked heaven and earth for this,” Ives said.
Though he did not have a firm timeline for groundbreaking,
Ives estimated that within a year Amazon would bring 1,000 jobs to the city’s Northeast Industrial Area, a section of northeastern Tracy specifically dedicated to industrial development. Ives said the planned facility would likely be an automated distribution center with a robotics element.
“The pay scale is higher than at a standard distribution center,” he said.
Ives also said the city would benefit from a boost in sales tax.
Amazon has estimated a “low end” of $100 million in point-of-sales business annually at the proposed Tracy center, according to Ives.
Though he did not specifically mention Amazon, Tracy Finance Director Zane Johnston said Wednesday, Nov. 21, that Tracy would see about $1 million in sales taxes from a company with $100 million in sales.
However, he said the city’s half-cent Measure E sales tax would not apply to purchases through a fulfillment center such as those Amazon operates — except for purchases made by people within Tracy city limits.
Johnston noted that the city’s initial tax share from such a company could be lower, because of a policy passed in December that allows Tracy to offer a temporary sales tax rebate as a financial incentive to new employers that create more than 1,000 jobs.
“The exact dollar amount remains to be seen, and that’s talking about any entity … based on the policy we have,” Johnston said.
Ives said sales tax money from a potential Amazon fulfillment center would be funneled into the city’s deficit-saddled general fund and could help the city provide services to residents, such as police and fire protection.
Though the agreement with Tracy was not confirmed by Amazon officials, who did not respond to a Wednesday, Nov. 21, request for comment as of press time, Ives said an announcement could be made as early as Monday, Nov. 26.
Ives said he had not signed a nondisclosure agreement regarding the negotiations, although City Manager Leon Churchill, Development and Engineering Services Director Andrew Malik and other staff members did so. Churchill refused to make any comment regarding the matter.
Ives said he and others at the city had been careful to not leak information that might damage the project’s prospects.
But while City Hall remained silent concerning Amazon, Ives insisted city staff members were not inactive.
At least two council decisions in the past 12 months, he confirmed, are linked to the anticipated Amazon center.
On May 4, the City Council gave Prologis the unanimous go-ahead to construct three new buildings totaling about 1 million square feet south of Grant Line Road off Paradise Road.
On Dec. 21, 2011, the council called a special meeting to unanimously approve giving companies with local gross annual sales of $100 million or more a temporary break on sales tax. At the time, Malik said the council decision would help Tracy create more local jobs.
In May, Amazon announced it would place a separate distribution and fulfillment center in Patterson, about 20 miles southeast of Tracy. That outpost, like the anticipated center in Tracy, will take up about 1 million square feet of building space and will employ about 1,500 people, according to city of Patterson estimates.
• Contact Jon Mendelson at 830-4231 or jmendelson@tracypress.com.
Unfortunately good paying jobs in tech/biotech/software/engineering etc. will never locate here. Too far from the center of the universe.
2. Are you doing something to bring the kind of jobs you want to locate in Tracy ?
3. The people electing our state and federal politicians voted for less business. Take your comments to them.
Taxes, regulation, population, available workforce, and education have a direct relationship with business willing to come to an area.
By law, cities are not allowed to carry a deficit....neither are States. (Only the Federal Government is allowed to get away with that.)
Remember, Ives has been promising to deliver these projects for the past ten years.
Does a "low-wage, dead-end job" exist with your line of work? What exactly are you offering the community? What is its social value? We have been losing open space because of the unabated propagation of our species and others we have decided to over-propagate (e.g., cats and dogs).
Perhaps we ought to examine the low-wage job. Perhaps we ought to ask ourselves whether it ought to be judged as a low-wage job. Perhaps we ought to ask whether the low-wage job ought to command more compensation. From my perspective, your comment is prejudicial and ambiguous. What are you really saying?
the answer to the first question depends on how inclusive you are when you say "...your line of work...". The company I work for designs and develops medical devices such as PTA/PTCA balloon catheters, stents, aortic stent grafts, guidewires, guide catheters, etc.. While there are what I would consider dead-end jobs related to the work they are in the support functions rather than part of the actual business. In other words the contractors who provide janitorial services, IT (India), cafeteria staff, etc.. Those jobs also have value too and I have am glad they are available but at least there is a balance in the available types of positions.
As far as "social value" that is a personal judgement but I doubt most folks would argue against the notion that developing and manufacturing products that save lives provides more value than a warehouse that distributes the latest consumer goods and gizmos.
I agree that many folks in relatively low wage jobs deserve to make considerably more but for better or worse I dont get to determine the pay for different jobs. The free market decides that.
While I may not have put it most tactfully in my initial response, all I am saying is that there is a serious imbalance in Tracy's job landscape that is only exacerbated by bringing in yet another warehouse. There are endless warehouse and retail jobs here but almost nothing for anyone else. It would be nice to see the city leaders work to make the job landscape a bit more balanced.
Maybe they can have a grand opening to coincide with the opening of the spirit amusement park
So, $8.05/hour instead of $8.00?