Old Kmart an Amazon hub

200 jobs to be created as facilities open next year

Retail giant announced plans Tuesday to open new delivery stations in Norfolk, Hampton.

“To have this long-vacant eyesore being turned into an Amazon center, with new jobs, is beyond fantastic.”

— Hampton Mayor Donnie Tuck

Amazon announced Tuesday that it plans to open new delivery stations in Norfolk and Hampton next year.

In Hampton, Amazon paid $5.95 million for the 21-acre site of a former Kmart store at 210 W. Mercury Blvd. on Nov. 25, according to city property records.

In Norfolk, Amazon will be moving into a space at 1400 Sewells Point Road.

The global e-commerce giant said the two stations, where packages will be loaded into vehicles to be delivered to customers, are expected to create more than 200 jobs, both full- and part-time.

Hampton recently rezoned the site where Kmart opened in 1975, but had left vacant since the retailer closed in 2016.

R.J. Nutter, an attorney representing the landowner that eventually sold the property to Amazon, Florida-based Gator Hampton Partners LLLP, told Hampton planning commissioners in October that he couldn’t “reveal who the client is in this case.”

Hampton Mayor Donnie Tuck cheered the development in a statement. “To have this long-vacant eyesore being turned into an Amazon center, with new jobs, is beyond fantastic,” he said. The company said it had been working with the city’s economic development department for the last year to develop the site.

Amazon is building two other centers in Hampton Roads, a multistory, 3.8-million-square-foot, robotics-heavy operation in Suffolk that’s expected to employ 1,000 people and an import processing facility in Chesapeake expected to create 500 jobs.