Massive Amazon warehouse on Wednesday county agenda

Orange County officials are set to begin on Wednesday a public review of a plan to build a sprawling warehouse for online retailer Amazon near Orlando International Airport.

The 130-acre project would give Amazon a footprint of 855,000 square feet, equivalent to 15 football fields, and total space of 2.3 million square feet. In one building, it would surpass the total space in both buildings of the Orange County Convention Center.

Amazon hasn’t confirmed it is behind the project, but the Sentinel previously obtained emails from developers to Orange County officials that said the project was Amazon’s.

The warehouse site is about two miles south of the airport along Boggy Creek Road. The plan is on the agenda for Wednesday’s meeting of the county’s Development Review Committee.

The meeting starts with public comments at 9 a.m., in the county’s Public Works Building, 4200 S. John Young Parkway.

The plan on the agenda says the building would be 51 feet tall, which is about 4½ stories in residential construction. The plan also says county parking rules would require about 2,500 parking spaces on 36.48 acres.

Emails between developer Seefried Industrial Properties and Orange County officials said the warehouse would use robotic storage systems that can quickly retrieve any of the millions of products the retailer sells online. It’s to be similar to centers built in Ruskin and Lakeland. It had been called “Project Mojo” in previous county communications.

Seefried, which has partnered on other Amazon warehouse developments, also sought government documents showing the facility would fit current land-use rules. “Because of the required design investment, Amazon is putting a lot of pressure on us to produce a county letter/memo that states that proposed building fits within the current Airport South PD,” another email reads.

Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), led by CEO and founder Jeff Bezos, would have a 15-year lease on the facility, emails from Seefried showed.