Amazon comes to town: Box Elder welcomes world’s largest online retailer

BOX ELDER, S.D. (KEVN) - Amazon is coming to town. On Tuesday, Amazon, the City of Box Elder, and the Governor’s Office of Economic Development visited the broken ground where the new WSD2 facility will sit.

For Amazon, the business park at 479 East Mall Court in Box Elder, along I-90 and Elk Vale Road is a prime spot for the new 40,000-square-foot facility.

“There’s not really a house in this area. This has very quick access to the interstate. The access points to get to the interstate don’t interfere with public neighborhoods or school routes,” explains Derek Wingfield, public information officer for the City of Box Elder.

Amazon is the world’s largest online retailer and will bring nearly 100 jobs to the area.

Some cities that previously threw a welcome party for Amazon soon found an Achilles heel in the plan; traffic tends to build up.

“Typically, what you would see in operations like this, they would start their delivery time frames before peak travel hours and have those drivers come in after peak travel hours. We work to minimize any impact on local traffic patterns as much as we can,” says Jason Vangalis, an Amazon Economic Development Policy Manager.

Amazon’s minimum wage is $15 an hour, but Vangalis says nationwide it averages closer to $19. “Of course, we look at the market, we’ll pay what the market demands here locally,” says Vangalis.

Amazon has been in talks with Box Elder for more than a year. “I don’t think you’d ever find a negative in a new employer. Amazon is a huge company,” says Wingfield. The public information officer says Amazon was easy to work with and he believes that will carry over into how they will treat their employees.

One year ago, the U.S. Department of Labor cited Amazon for exposing their employees to lower-back injuries at 6 locations.

Vangalis says the new facility should get those Amazon packages to your front door closer to the 2-day target.

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