Warehouse robots near; you should be prepared
The Lehigh Valley has a lovehate relationship with its warehouse industry. We love the two-day delivery of our favorite consumer goods and the 32,000 jobs it’s helped create here, while simultaneously hating the truck traffic and lower air quality it brings and the farmland it has churned up.
Now, there’s a new, potentially even more polarizing, warehouse trend, but I’m hoping that if we start preparing before they’re built, we can get this relationship off to a better start.
High cube and automated warehouses are pounding at the doors with a size and look we haven’t seen before. Unlike most of the nearly 100 million square feet of warehouse space we have now, these are taller — some as high as 140 feet — and intensely automated. They have the potential for positive and adverse impacts to our communities, but if wedothis right — and do it now — we have a chance to encourage the positive and mitigate the adverse.
For that reason, the LVPC has worked for more than two months creating a community guide, designed to give municipalities the knowledge, knowhow and choices they need to be ready when this emerging trend comes knocking. You can find the document, in pdf or interactive online form, at https://lvpc. org/c-guides—-model-regs.html.
Variations of high cube warehouses have been proposed in Upper Macungie and Hanover Township, Lehigh County, and industrial developers are working with Upper Mount Bethel Township to alter zoning and development regulations to accommodate this type of use. These are so new that there has been little study on them. It is an emerging trend worldwide.
They are highly automated, with newer warehouses utilizing rack systems that also serve as the building’s structure. The rack system is wrapped with a metal skin that acts as the building’s walls, and within those walls, robotic forklifts move about the racks to place and remove goods going in and out of the warehouse. They are most commonly used for refrigerated goods, but have begun to be used for dry goods, beverages and electronics, as well.
First the potential positives. Because they are tall, rather than sprawling, the same 4.8 million cubic foot high cube warehouse can be built on a footprint of just more than one acre, while a traditional warehouse of the same volume needs 4.6 acres. That could help relieve some of the development pressures on our farmlands and open space. Because they’re highly efficient, customer wait times may decrease, less energy is used inside these structures and they can easily be designed to offset