SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — Just how big is the Amazon fulfillment center under construction in northern Sioux Falls?
Butch Warrington, the chief building official for the city of Sioux Falls, said the five-story structure is 2.9 million square feet.
That would make it larger than the 2,600,000 square-foot Ford Motor Company’s Dearborn, Michigan, truck plant.
According to Amazon, many fulfillment centers can hold 28 football fields. A football field, including end zones, is about 58,000 square feet.
In rough numbers, the fulfillment center is larger than the 100,000 capacity Rose Bowl. The Rose Bowl is 79,156 square feet, according to the city of Pasadena, California. Specifically, “the stadium has a rim circumference of 2,430 feet (741 meters); 880 feet (268 meters) from the north to the south rim and 79,156 square feet (7,354 sq. meters) with a circumference of 1,350 feet,” according to the city of Pasadena.
The fulfillment center is more than double the square footage of Target Field in Minneapolis. Ballparkauthority.com said Target Field square footage is one million square feet.
John Deere Waterloo Works, the largest John Deere manufacturing plant campus in North America covers 5.9 million square feet, according to media reports and economic development publications. The tractor cab assembly and assembly operations occupy about 2.9 million square feet, according to One John Deere.
The Amazon facility will be the largest building in Sioux Falls, according to city officials.
Comparatively, Forbes reported in 2020 that the Smithfield complex was two million square feet.
When the Amazon building is broken down to its floors, the largest one is the first floor at about 635,000 square feet with a mezzanine of about 294,000 square feet, Warrington said.
The second through fifth floors are about 492,000 square feet, he said.
Although Business Insider and Emporis track the tallest buildings in U.S. states, they don’t list the largest buildings.
The new Amazon building will likely be the largest in terms of square footage in South Dakota, even when the first floor is the only consideration.
The former Gateway building in North Sioux City, South Dakota, is about 750,000 square feet, according to multiple media reports.
Keating Resources reported in 2018 that the former Gateway building was the largest in South Dakota at the time. The building had been sold in 2018.
Gateway, the former computer company, built the building on 77 acres in six phases at an estimated cost of $70 million, according to Keating Resources. The six phases were from 1989 to 1997.
The building has had several owners since the company sold its business to Acer in 2007.
The Amazon project has already received building permits valued at nearly $300 million.
At five floors, it will be about 100 feet tall, which makes it shorter than the Century Link building in Sioux Falls, which is listed as the tallest in the state at 174 feet.
The Amazon fulfillment center is scheduled to open in 2022.
It is expected to employ up to 1,000 people. According to Amazon, many fulfillment centers can hold tens of millions of items on any given day.
