City of Toledo Welcomes Amazon to Toledo

Friday, March 13, 2020

Amazon intends to build and operate a new delivery station with more than 110 new jobs on the Hawthorne Hills property, formerly known as the Southwyck Shopping Center property, Toledo Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz announced today.

“This is a huge win for Toledo and for this area of our city, which has been clamoring for years for a much-needed redevelopment on this site that has sat empty for too long,” Mayor Kapszukiewicz said. “This is another step – a huge step – toward the revitalization of this entire area and the Reynolds Road corridor. I am very excited to welcome Amazon to our community and thank them for investing in Toledo.”

Legislation will be presented to Toledo City Council next week authorizing the city to enter into a purchase agreement with Amazon for the sale and redevelopment of the property.

“Our primary goal was to put this property back into productive use in a manner that strengthens the surrounding area through the creation of new jobs and new capital investment,” Mayor Kapszukiewicz said during a news conference at the Hawthorne Hills property.

Hawthorne Hills is one of the largest available pad-ready development sites in Toledo. The Kapszukiewicz administration proactively worked for two years to attract a logistics and distribution user to the site. In July 2019, Toledo rezoned the property from Regional Commercial – Sign Overlay (CR-SO) to Limited Industrial (IL) to align the property’s zoning with what was being marketed for the site. By proactively rezoning the property, the city saved Amazon up to 120 business days of entitlements process.

“This development is exactly what South Toledo needs to kick-start the prosperity here on the site that many of us still know as Southwyck,” said Toledo City Council President Matt Cherry. “We have welcomed other businesses back to this area, including Rahe & Co. CPAs and APS Medical Billing, which saw the great potential of investing in this part of Toledo. Now, it is our great pleasure to welcome Amazon to this site.”

The proposed structure of the deal allows the city to recoup the $3.6 million invested into the site since it was purchased by the city in December 2014. Amazon intends to purchase the entire 58.5 acre site and to create 10 fulltime jobs and 110 part-time jobs. The property will be sold to the company for $1. No other incentives are being offered by the city.

“The city will implement tax increment financing for the property, which will create a mechanism for us to recoup the entire $3.6 million investment, which includes bonds and holding costs,” Mayor Kapszukiewicz said.

In order to protect the city’s investment in the property, and a strategically important property in South Toledo, Amazon will be required to execute a conditional buy back option at closing. The option will allow the city to buy the property back for $1 in the event Amazon has not developed the property within four years.

“The site’s size, easy access to I-80/90 and I-475, and proximity to customers and an accessible workforce lends itself well to being a logistics operation,” said Brandon Sehlhorst, a commissioner of economic development for the city of Toledo. “There is precedent for this use in the Reynolds Road Corridor, including Estes Trucking located down the street from this site, the J.B. Hunt Transport Services operation at the former FedEx facility on Reynolds Road, Williams Distributing in the former Toys-R-Us store across the street from this site, and the UPS major distribution center on the other side of the Ohio Turnpike in Maumee.”