Wal-Mart is adding
2,000 new jobs at warehouses in Davenport and Cocoa.
Wal-Mart is bolstering its presence in and around Central Florida with 2,000 new jobs at warehouses in Davenport and Cocoa.
Wal-Mart announced Tuesday that its Davenport facilities, 2.2 million square feet of warehouses built to support its e-commerce operations, are fully operational. The location has about 550 employees and the company plans to hire up to 1,000 more over the next year.
Wal-Mart also confirmed the Cocoa facility Tuesday, just before a call between Wal-Mart U.S. CEO and president Greg Foran and Florida Gov. Rick Scott on Tuesday afternoon.
The new distribution centers are part of Wal-Mart’s plan to create a bigger distribution network for both online and in-store purchases. After lagging behind Amazon’s online growth for years, Wal-Mart reported online sales grew 63 percent in the first quarter of 2017.
Wal-Mart also announced plans to remodel six stores in Central Florida, including Supercenter stores in Casselberry and two in Orlando. The Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market store in Oviedo, the first of the format in the state, is also getting a remodel. A regular Wal-Mart and a Neighborhood Market in Orlando are also getting remodels. Part of those remodels will include the expansion of WalMart’s grocery pickup system, where customers can order groceries and other goods online and pick them up at a drive-through outside the store at an appointed time.
Wal-Mart said it will hire about 450 workers for the Cocoa distribution center, which will support stores in the region. The 650,000 square foot warehouse. Wal-Mart said the total investment in that facility is about $145 million.
Wal-Mart said it is investing about $300 million in Davenport. The state is chipping in with another $850,000 in target industry tax credits, according to the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity. Those incentives are only paid out of Wal-Mart meets employment and salary totals, which are estimated at about $42,000 per employee for the Davenport buildings.
Wal-Mart received about $12.5 million in economic incentives from Polk County to construct the two Davenport warehouse buildings, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
Wal-Mart has been fighting to keep up with a struggling retail sector and with competition from e-commerce giant Amazon. have been aggressively competing on price with programs such as free shipping on purchases.
Developers are planning to build a 2.4 million-square-foot warehouse for Amazon just south of Orlando International Airport. Amazon also has distribution centers in Davenport, Plant City and Ruskin to help deliver goods in as little as an hour in Central Florida. The proposed Amazon warehouse near the airport is still in the design phase.