For years, one of Amazon’s massive Pasco warehouses sat empty, a $140 million question mark on the edge of town. Now it has an answer: hundreds of jobs.

The company this month began shifting 900 employees working at its cross-dock facility at 1351 S. Road 40 E. to the warehouse across the street at 1202 S. Road 40 E., commonly referred to as Project Pearl, Amazon representative Austin Stowe told the Tri-Cities Area Journal of Business. 

The move also will bring roughly 800 more hires once the cross-dock facility reopens as a distribution center in 2027.

Pearl has spent months undergoing tens of millions of dollars in upgrades and renovations ahead of opening as a regional distribution center.

While the facility was modified with automation in mind, Stowe said all the employees from the neighboring warehouse have been offered roles there to run the facility efficiently.

As for the cross-dock facility, it will sit empty after fully shutting down in September before it, too, is renovated and updated in mid- to late 2027 to become a primary distribution center, or what Amazon calls a 1DC facility.

When it reopens, it will need its own staff of roughly 800 employees, who the online retailer will begin hiring while construction crews work on the building.

“This is going to end up being a net gain for the community,” Stowe said.

Multimillion-dollar improvements

Construction on the two massive Amazon warehouses began in 2021 near Highway 12 and north of Sacajawea State Park, where the Snake River flows into the Columbia River.

The cross-dock facility came online in 2024 with roughly 1,000 workers. The facility was one of the company’s first national inbound cross-docks, receiving shipments of incoming products from vendors and sellers from all over the world, which are then sent out to other Amazon facilities for processing and eventual delivery.

The Amazon warehouses, including the multimillion-dollar delivery station at 5802 N. Capitol Ave., represent huge investments in the Tri-Cities. 

The two Amazon properties on South Road 40 on the east side of Pasco are among the highest assessed property values in Franklin County, at a combined $367 million. Pearl’s property tax bill this year is nearly $1.5 million, while Oyster’s is nearly $1.7 million.

Since being built, Pearl, however, has remained idle, with one Amazon official saying in late 2024 the company was working “to understand how best to utilize that facility within the fulfillment network.” 

The company began securing building permits for Project Pearl in April, which have included extensive improvements impacting nearly all areas of the facility: additional dock doors; chain-link fence enclosures; electrical, telecommunications and security upgrades; fire protection system modifications; parking; water coolers; supporting structural modifications; and miscellaneous signs.

Amazon began securing building permits for the previously vacant Project Pearl in April. Those permits have included extensive improvements impacting nearly all areas of the facility: additional dock doors; chain-link fence enclosures; electrical, telecommunications and security upgrades; fire protection system modifications; parking; water coolers; supporting structural modifications; and miscellaneous signage.

| Photo by Nathan Finke

Facility modifications

As a regional distribution center, Pearl will store items the online retailer sells but that don’t move as quickly as hotter products, Stowe said. It will then distribute those items to fulfillment centers in the region as needed.

The cross-dock facility will see its role slightly modified after it is converted to a 1DC as it will still be a storage and transfer point. However, it will be focused on making sure Amazon’s highest-selling products are always available in the region.

Amazon was one of the top 10 largest employers in the Journal’s 2025 Book of Lists with 1,466 employees across all its sites in the region. Adding another 800 employees would put it among the area’s top five largest employers.

According to Amazon, the average pay for customer fulfillment and operations roles is over $22 per hour, or just under $46,000 per year, plus job benefits such as health insurance.

Wanted: Humans

Permits for Pearl indicated it would end up having more automation technology than its neighboring facility currently does.

Amazon has not hidden its intent to automate as much of its operations as it can, ostensibly to reduce its reliance on and the cost of human workers.

The New York Times reported in October 2025 that the online retailer determined it could eliminate the need to hire 160,000 people by 2027 via automation. A flagship facility in Louisiana uses 1,000 robots to handle the bulk of its operations.

Early in 2026, the retail giant announced plans to cut nearly 5,000 employees across the state after announcing the reduction of 16,000 roles across Amazon nationwide in January to reduce layers and bureaucracy.

Despite those shifts, Stowe said human workers are still critical to running the Tri-Cities facilities.

“We still need a lot of people,” Stowe said. “Even when we do have robotics, those sites still need a thousand people to operate.”