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Tag: Amazon.com Inc.

Amazon to hire 1,400 Virginians to meet order surge, donate $1M to Arlington nonprofits

Amazon.com Inc. announced this week that it would add 100,000 full-time and part-time jobs to its United States fulfillment centers — with an expected 1,400 jobs added in Virginia — and will add $2 per hour worked through April for current employees.

“We also know many people have been economically impacted as jobs in areas like hospitality, restaurants, and travel are lost or furloughed as part of this crisis,” Dave Clark, Amazon’s senior vice president of worldwide operations and customer service, said in a statement. “We want those people to know we welcome them on our teams until things return to normal and their past employer is able to bring them back.”

Available jobs include shoppers who select and package Whole Foods products for one- or two-hour delivery; warehouse workers, Amazon Air airplane cargo loaders; and delivery drivers. Amazon purchased Whole Foods for $13.7 billion in June 2017.

“The vast majority of our employees around the world continue to come to work and serve the people in their communities in a way that very few can — delivering critical supplies directly to the doorsteps of people who need them,” Amazon spokesperson Courtney Norman says. “The safety of our employees is always our top priority and we have measures in place to ensure they are protected and supported during this time.”

Construction began earlier this year on Amazon’s $2.5 billion HQ2 in Arlington, which is expected to add 25,000 jobs and more than 8 million square feet of development in the Crystal City, Pentagon City and Potomac Yard areas. On Wednesday, Amazon announced it donated $1 million in emergency COVID-19 response funds to four area community foundations—ACT for Alexandria, Arlington Community Foundation, Community Foundation for Northern Virginia and the Greater Washington Community Foundation.

“The Washington, D.C., area is our new home, and we must rally together to support our neighbors during this difficult time for our region and around the world,” Jay Carney, Amazon senior vice president of global corporate affairs, said in a statement.

Amazon has also created a $25 million Amazon Relief fund to support its independent delivery service partners and drivers, Amazon Flex participants — drivers who have flexible hours and create their own schedules — and seasonal employees.

Amazon signs lease on PBS HQ space in Arlington

Amazon.com Inc. has signed a lease with its HQ2 landlord and developer JBG Smith Properties for a 272,000-square-feet building in Arlington that has served as the headquarters for the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) since 2006. 

The e-commerce giant expects to move into the space at 2100 Crystal Drive by the end of 2020. PBS will be moving into a 120,00-square-foot space at 1225 S. Clark St. by mid-2020, according to a news release.

“We are thrilled that PBS will remain in Crystal City, especially during such a transformative and exciting time for this community,” PBS President and CEO Paula Kerger said in a statement released Tuesday.

Amazon plans to lease a total of approximately 857,000 square feet for its HQ2 East Coast headquarters in Arlington from JBG Smith, which is also constructing Amazon HQ2’s twin office towers. Amazon began its physical expansion beyond its HQ2 base camp offices in December, moving into 191,000 square feet of renovated leased space at nearby 1800 S. Bell St. owned by JBG Smith. JBG Smith began construction on the first 2.15 million square feet of space for HQ2 in January. Amazon anticipates hiring approximately 25,000 people to fill a total of 8 million square feet of development in Arlington.

JBG Smith also sold Metropolitan Park — which is less than a mile from 2100 Crystal Drive — to Amazon in January for approximately $155 million. The real estate company says in its Q4 investor package that the sale price was $11 million above the estimated contract value due to development density in the area.

JBG Smith, which owns a total of 6.2 million square feet of space in Crystal City, Pentagon City and Potomac Yard areas in Arlington, has been rebranding the HQ2 area as “National Landing.”

“We are also focused on completing design and entitlements for the next tranche of multifamily development opportunities in National Landing including, 2000 and 2001 South Bell Street, 222 23rd Street, and 2525 Crystal Drive, all of which are within a ½ mile of Amazon’s new headquarters,” the investor package reads.

George Mason University seeks developer for Arlington campus expansion

George Mason University is seeking a development partner to design, construct and operate its proposed $250 million Institute for Digital InnovAtion (IDIA) set to open in September 2025 on its Arlington campus.

The university has released a request for proposals (RFP) seeking for partners to build 400,000 square feet of new building space adjacent to its current campus in the Virginia Square neighborhood in Arlington. In November 2018, Mason announced the expansion of its Arlington campus as part of the state’s tech-talent pipeline initiative to grow computing programs and increase the number of graduates with skills being sought by Amazon.com Inc. and other tech employers in the commonwealth.

The $250 million allocated for the institute will go to constructing buildings, creating programs and hiring additional faculty. Mason announced in November 2018 that it plans to add a School of Computing as part of the IDIA expansion.

The IDIA campus will include labs, coworking and public programming spaces, ground-floor retail, a parking garage and a public plaza. Currently, the university anticipates that 38,000 square feet will be needed for classrooms, 71,500 square feet for labs, 62,500 square feet for offices, 15,000 square feet for retail and 146,000 square feet for parking, according to the RFP.

“This will be a game-changer for Mason faculty, staff and students and for our academic, corporate, and community partners,” Deborah Crawford, Mason vice president for research, innovation and economic impact, said in a statement. “We envision IDIA as a place where discovery, innovation and learning flourish as individuals, organizations and communities work together to develop, deploy and study the utilization of technologies and systems that advance a more just, prosperous and sustainable world.”

With the expansion, Mason’s Arlington campus is anticipated to occupy more than 1.2 million square feet about 3.5 miles northwest from the site of Amazon’s $2.5 billion HQ2 East Coast headquarters, which is currently under development in Arlington’s Crystal City, Pentagon City and Potomac Yard areas. 

“The Institute for Digital InnovAtion will anchor the Rosslyn-Ballston innovation corridor and serve as an engine of research, economic growth, job creation and new tax revenue,” Mason President Anne Holton said in a statement. “Private, nonprofit and public sector partners will be embedded in the innovation district with hundreds of faculty innovators, and thousands of graduate students in tech programs. This confluence of expertise and perspectives will propel the region’s innovation economy in the coming decades.”

Conceptual proposals for the project are due March 31. Mason anticipates the conceptual RFP process will conclude in May. A short list of development teams will then enter the second stage of the selection process. According to the RFP, Mason plans to enter negotiations with the selected developer between October 2020 and March 2021.

Virginia Tech Innovation Campus names Cornell dean as executive director

Lance R. Collins, the Joseph Silbert Dean of Engineering at Cornell University, has been selected as the first vice president and executive director of Virginia Tech’s $1 billion Innovation Campus, which is set to open in Alexandria’s North Potomac Yard area in the fall. He will join Virginia Tech as of Aug. 1.

The Innovation Campus is located in close proximity to Amazon.com Inc.’s $2.5 billion HQ2 East Coast headquarters and was a key part of the state’s successful pitch for landing HQ2. The new campus, which is being built on the site of a Regal movie theater, is part of a statewide initiative to create more skilled workers with degrees in tech fields. Focus on tech talent, research and education, the Innovation Campus will serve graduate and postgraduate students. Its academic offerings will include a new master of engineering degree in computer science.

Collins has led Cornell’s college of engineering since 2010 and joined the university as a professor in 2002. He was part of the leadership team at Cornell that bid to partner with New York City to build Cornell Tech, which opened in 2017. While at Cornell, Collins raised $400 million in new gifts and secured $50 million gifts to name the Meinig School of Biomedical Engineering and the Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.

“Lance Collins is a world-class leader with impeccable credentials, a commitment to collaboration and experience scaling up both an undergraduate student talent initiative and a new graduate campus in an urban area,” Sands said in a statement. “He’s the ideal person to build on our momentum and launch a campus in the greater Washington, D.C., area that will expand the pool of tech talent and lead our exploration of the human-computing frontier.”

Collins spent 11 years as an assistant professor, associate professor and professor of chemical engineering at Penn State University before his time at Cornell. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.

He holds a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree from Princeton University and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. All of his degrees are in chemical engineering. Collins will also serve as a professor of mechanical engineering at the Innovation Campus.

The Innovation Campus’s fall 2020 classes will meet in existing Virginia Tech academic space in Northern Virginia. The campus’ first building is scheduled to open in 2024. The entire Innovation Campus will take approximately 10 years to complete and will enroll up to 750 master’s candidates and hundreds of doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows.

Amazon HQ2 and Arlington County government will be solar powered

Arlington County and Amazon.com Inc. have entered into agreements with Richmond-based Dominion Energy Inc. to purchase power for local government operations and Amazon’s HQ2 East Coast headquarters from a solar farm more than 200 miles away in Southern Virginia.

The Arlington County Board voted Tuesday to approve the agreement with Dominion to procure power from the solar farm Dominion is constructing in Pittsylvania County. Arlington County is expected to purchase approximately one-third of the solar farm’s output to power county government operations, while Amazon announced it will purchase the remaining output under a separate agreement to power HQ2, as well as other Amazon-owned properties around Virginia, including distribution centers and Whole Foods Market grocery stores.

The solar farm is anticipated to be operational by 2022.

Patrick Leonard, senior manager of Amazon’s renewable energy procurement team, led Amazon’s negotiations for the solar project. “My role working with the team in Arlington County involved sharing perspectives on how to strategically assess a renewable energy project that is right for a business or a government and the environment,” Leonard said in a statement. “Once this project is complete, we will continue to look for ways to advance our commitment to sustainability in Arlington.”

This project is part of Amazon’s commitment to The Climate Pledge, an Amazon-cofounded initiative that aims  to meet the Paris Agreement’s goals to mitigate climate change 10 years early. The pledge calls for signatory businesses to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and achieve net zero annual carbon emissions by 2040. 

The Dominion solar farm in Pittsylvania is expected to generate approximately 80% (79,000 megawatt-hours of energy) of Arlington County’s electric energy needs for local government operations, including powering county buildings, traffic signals and water pumping and wastewater treatment facilities. The county’s 2019 Community Energy Plan calls for using renewable energy sources to power at least 50% of county operations by 2022.

“This is a groundbreaking partnership for the county,” said Arlington County Board Chair Libby Garvey. “It will take us a long way toward our goal of 100% use of renewable sources for all electricity used in government operations by 2025.”

Under the new solar agreement with Dominion, the county will not have to pay any capital funding or upfront costs. Rather, the solar farm will generate electricity that Dominion will sell into the wholesale electric grid and charge at market rates. The county says that the solar project will not have any impact on current Dominion customer rates and the agreement was designed to be cost-neutral.

Dominion has more than seven million customers in 18 states and has more than $100 billion in assets.