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Amazon to build $60M plant Pullman neighborhood

Ninth Ward Alderman Anthony A. Beale this week announced that Amazon is creating a 40-acre distribution facility in Pullman that will bring $60 million of investment and hundreds of new jobs to a community that is rapidly becoming the green industrial center of Chicago. The facility is being developed and leased by the Ryan Companies on vacant land that was formerly the site of Ryerson Steel and is now owned by U.S. Bank. The Amazon Fulfillment Center will be located immediately north of Amazon’s Whole Foods Midwest Distribution Center which was also developed by Ryan Companies and opened in 2018.

“We could not be happier about Amazon locating its first Chicago Fulfillment Center in Pullman,” said Alderman Beale. “It underscores the fact that Pullman is rapidly becoming the new green industry/transit, logistics and distribution center of Chicago. With no taxpayer dollars or incentives needed we expect to break ground this spring and celebrate its opening this Fall.”

Pullman had lost hundreds of jobs in the 1990s due to the shut-down of Ryerson Steel and the Pullman Works, but over the last several years working together with community leaders and city government, Chicago Neighborhood Initiatives (CNI) and Alderman Beale have brought $350 million in new industry and retail that’s created more than 1,500 jobs in an area once written off by many pundits and prognosticators.

New entities in the area include: the first U.S. plant of Method Products, the environmentally- friendly cleaning products company; Gotham Greens first facility in Chicago, which first built the world’s largest commercial rooftop greenhouse atop of the Method Plant, and last November opened another free standing, 100,000 square foot hydroponic facility immediately adjacent to the first facility.

“While the location of Pullman – with its unparalleled access to the world by road, rail, air and water – certainly first attracted these companies – the fact that they are doubling down on their investment is even more gratifying,” says Alderman Beale. “Nothing could speak more eloquently to the increasingly vibrant fabric of the community which has worked with us to improve schools, including the top-rated Gwendolyn Brooks Academy, creating the South Side’s first regional retail center, anchored by Chicago’s first Walmart, and recently, the One Eleven Food Hall, the first Food Hall south of Chinatown and Pullman’s first sit-down restaurant in decades.”

“We look forward to this latest investment in our community, our ward, and our city,” adds Alderman Beale.

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