Interview ...
Mike Martin
Regional Development Officer
First Industrial Realty Trust

Background: First Industrial is building an 800,000 square foot
warehouse and distribution facility for Amazon.com in McDonough, GA, outside Atlanta -- one of seven new warehouses Amazon is opening this year. What does this mean? According to "Fortune" (Nov 8, 1999), "At full capacity, Amazon's warehouses will be able to ship $10 billion a year in merchandise." Note: If my math is correct, that's about $27 million per day, or 1 million $27 items per day, or 140,000 items per warehouse per day. ... Wow.

Pike: What's different about leasing space to a dot-com company?

Martin: The biggest difference we encountered was the speed of delivery. In our lease with Amazon.com we had to find ways to deliver a 400,000-sf expansion in four months and even then Amazon wanted it sooner. Every aspect of their business moves at a very rapid speed. Their race to build market share is very intense. Consequently, the demands they place on all their service providers are equally intense and time sensitive.

Pike: What type of digital connectivity did the owner and tenant maintain?

Martin: The use of e-mail proved to be essential in coordinating all the activities of not only our contractor and subcontractors, but also Amazon's racking and building systems subcontractors. Due to the compressed time frame, multiple subcontractors were at work within the facility at the same time. The only way to keep everybody coordinated was mass e-mails on a daily basis from the project superintendent.

Pike: Is the parking ratio different for e-commerce because of higher employee counts?

Martin: In the case of Amazon the parking ratio is most definitely higher. Amazon has stated that this facility will employ approximately 1,000 people. That is more than double the amount normally expected for an 800,000-sf warehouse. Fortunately, our facility was designed to be cross-docked and Amazon will not be using all the doors. Therefore, we were able to dedicate a portion of one of the truck courts for auto parking exclusively without interfering with their truck traffic.

--Peter