This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Amazon is growing in Utah and not just in Salt Lake City.
The online retail giant will open at least one smaller fulfillment center in the state as the company prepares to build a much bigger warehouse in Salt Lake City.
Earlier this year, Amazon.com Inc. leased a 93,000-square-foot warehouse space at 201 Commerce Center Drive in West Valley City, according to Mark Nord, director of that city's Redevelopment Agency.
The lease is for 10 years, Nord said. The company is currently contracting to alter the site before it becomes operational. It is not clear if that warehouse will continue to operate once the Salt Lake City facility opens.
The company has advertised at least one job opening for a part-time shipping and receiving associate in that West Valley City office.
The pay is $12 an hour, which is average for Amazon fulfillment associates, according to career and job site Glassdoor. A full-time worker making $12 an hour would have an annual salary of just under $25,000 a year, about half the average annual wage for Salt Lake County.
Earlier this month, Amazon said it would build an 850,000-square-foot fulfillment center in Salt Lake City's northwest quadrant. It will employ about 1,500 people.
The Governor's Office of Economic Development offered the company a $5.6 million incentive for that project.
Amazon will have to employ 130 people, earning 10 percent above the county average, to qualify for the post-performance incentive. The rest of the facility's workers may be paid much less without Amazon jeopardizing the deal.
The West Valley City facility was not part of the GOED incentive deal and Nord said the company did not reach out to the city's development agency for local incentives.
Additional managerial, tech and fulfillment job openings in Utah are listed on a different Amazon jobs website.
Those postings name the location as Draper, but Maridene Alexander, a public information officer for that city, did not know of an Amazon development there and said the jobs likely were being filled by a Draper-based employment agency. None of the postings listed a salary.
Amazon officials had little to say about the West Valley site. "The space you are referring to is a facility to support overall customer fulfillment," said spokeswoman Kristen Kish.