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This week Amazon celebrated the grand openings of two new facilities in West Virginia and hundreds of jobs paying at least $19 an hour.
The warehouse in Davisville, near Parkersburg, opened in November and employs more than 100 people. The one in Beaver, near Beckley, opened in December and employs about 200 people.
Both facilities stock frequently ordered items, something not all Amazon facilities do.
“This over 90,000-square-foot facility serves as both a first and last mile operation. So we do fulfillment operations here, and we deliver, of course, packages to our customers,” said Amazon’s Jamie York.
At Wednesday’s ribbon cutting ceremony in Beaver, local officials and state dignitaries, including Sen. Shelley Moore Capito and Gov. Patrick Morrisey, were on hand to cheer on the job creation as well as the speedier delivery of purchases.
“Today is an April Fool’s Day on my husband. Because guess what? My Amazon packages are going to get there quicker, and I can get more of them, delivered by West Virginians,” Capito said. “All the partners and the leaders, I know that the economic development folks have been working hard on this, our state delegation, and it’s great to see it come to fruition today.”
Spokesman Sam Fisher said it’s all part of Amazon’s $4 billion rural delivery expansion.
“As we have seen other companies sort of pull back from rural, small communities where it’s a little more expensive to serve customers, we’re stepping in and making sure that we’re getting those deliveries to customers because we know that they’re there,” Fisher said.
“We know that they want their stuff fast, and we want to make sure that we’re there to do that,” he added.
Fisher also said there were several factors that made it possible for the company to open in West Virginia.
“So anytime we look to open a new facility there are a number of things that we’re taking into consideration, but two of the big ones are, do we have strong local partners that we can work with to get a facility like this off the ground, and does that area have a strong local workforce that we know can raise the bar and do the work that we like to do,” Fisher said.
“In the case of both Beaver and Davisville, we found both of those things in abundance,” he said.
Fisher said customers within a 65-mile radius of either facility should notice much quicker delivery times.
Morrisey said the opening of the two facilities is a sign that West Virginia is growing and competing for major employers.