Amazon announces new facility in Harrison County

Aprile Rickert, The Evening News and the Tribune, Jeffersonville, Ind.
·2 min read

Oct. 19—HARRISON COUNTY — Amazon has announced its second Amazon fulfillment center in Southern Indiana, which will add new jobs to the growing region.

The 270,000-square-foot facility is expected to open in 2022 at 4677 Peter Schickel Way NE in Georgetown. Although it has a Georgetown address, the facility is under the umbrella of Harrison County. It will join the fulfillment center opened several years ago in the River Ridge Commerce Center in Jeffersonville.

"We're thrilled to announce a new state-of-the-art facility in Georgetown, which will allow us to deliver more packages, in a faster timeframe, to our customers across Kentuckiana," Amazon spokesperson Andre Woods said in a statement. "We are committed to employing hundreds here in Indiana and offering a very competitive employment package with opportunities for long-term growth, advancement and post-secondary education."

Wages start at $18 per hour for Amazon positions in fulfillment and transportation. Full-time employee benefits start on day one. This includes "health, vision, and dental insurance, 401(k) with 50% company match, up to 20 weeks paid parental leave, and Amazon's Career Choice program, in which the company will pay full college tuition for its frontline employees as part of $1.2 billion in investment to expand education and skills training benefits for its U.S. workforce," according to information provided by Woods.

Although in Harrison County, the fulfillment center will have an impact on the surrounding region, including Floyd County, which borders Harrison.

"Of course I'm excited to see Amazon coming to this region closer to Floyd County," Floyd County Commissioners President Shawn Carruthers said Tuesday.

"It will be great to get the jobs that will be available for Floyd County residents as well as Harrison. We can benefit well economically from that. Also it says a lot about our infrastructure and our proximity to Louisville which puts Floyd County in a very unique position."

Wendy Dant Chesser, executive director at One Southern Indiana, which is the chamber of commerce for Clark and Floyd counties, said the announcement of both the Harrison County and Franklin, Indiana, centers signal a focus on the state.

"They are definitely recognizing the Midwest's and Indiana's connections," she said. "We call Indiana the crossroads of American and I think Amazon's continued investment in the state does justify that."

She added that an obvious question many may have is how this will impact the already-struggling job market in the area.

"What does this mean for our employment base?" she asked. "Because we know it is already a tight job market and we have employers who have open positions that they cannot fill, but I think what that means for us is that this puts continued pressure on our employers to be creative in the strategies to both recruit and maintain their valued employees."