Amazon has agreed to a 50-year long lease to build an airport hub, investing a whopping $1.5 Billion. The company’s founder and CEO Jeff Bezos took to Twitter to make the announcement, sharing a picture of him on a front loader:
“We’re investing $1.5 billion in our new air hub to get you your packages faster. Three million square feet, and it’s going to create 2,000 jobs. And if you’re guessing that driving a front loader was fun, you’re right! #amazon #prime,” Bezos tweeted on Tuesday.
The airport hub was announced in 2017 and is being built on more than 900 acres of property from Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky International Airport in 2017. Space is close to the size of global hubs of top cargo airlines.
With the development of the airport hub, Amazon will have immediate access to a transportation hub in order to deliver products at a faster rate.
“This hub is going to let us get packages to customers faster, and that’s a big deal,” Bezos said. “We’re going to move Prime from two days to one day, and this hub is a big part of that.”
The airport hub will also eliminate the need for Amazon to partner with delivery services such as UPS, FedEx, or the U.S. Postal Service. As a result, Amazon will cost expenses while delivering products at a much more efficient rate.
Speaking of its investment plan in a statement released in 2017, the company had said, “Amazon has been an active member of the business community in Kentucky for nearly 20 years. Today, the company announced it will be creating new jobs and investing even further in Kentucky with plans to build a centralized air hub to support its growing fleet of Prime Air cargo planes.”
At present, the company has only a few dozen planes flying several hundred flights per week, but the hub is intended to house the company’s future grand logistics ambitions.
The hub is expected to be completed by 2021.