Amazon opens new facility in North Las Vegas amid warehouse boom

The Seattle e-commerce giant, founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, announced Thursday that it “officially launched” its new delivery station at 650 E. Owens Ave., at Las Vegas Boulevard North.

The newly built facility, near Jerry’s Nugget casino, spans 147,000 square feet and has created “hundreds of new jobs locally,” according to a news release.

It also features, on its exterior walls, a roughly 5,000-square-foot mural by Las Vegas artist Jerry Misko that he says took more than 400 hours to complete.

Amazon spokeswoman Lisa Campos said the facility opened in July.

Southern Nevada’s commercial real estate market has faced plenty of questions during the coronavirus pandemic, including how much office space firms need as people work from home. But industrial-property investors have still been churning out plenty of projects and buying buildings amid an accelerated shift to online shopping that has fueled demand for distribution space.

Amazon’s “last-mile” delivery stations typically span about 150,000 square feet — much smaller than its other facilities in the valley — and send goods directly to buyers, with its ubiquitous blue vans picking up packages there to bring to shoppers, Las Vegas real estate broker Dan Doherty, an industrial-property specialist with Colliers International, previously told the Review-Journal.

Packages are sent to last-mile facilities from neighboring Amazon fulfillment and sorting centers, loaded into vehicles, and delivered to buyers, Amazon said Thursday.

The facility on Owens is Amazon’s 13th operations site in Nevada, its news release said, and it’s not the only newly built last-mile distribution center to debut this year.

Amazon opened another one in April off St. Rose Parkway near the M Resort in Henderson, Campos confirmed Thursday.

Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342. Follow @eli_segall on Twitter.