Amazon opened its 285,000-square-foot cargo facility in the northwest corner of Lakeland Linder in July 2020. Now, the company is seeking to expand on 63 acres adjacent to its current facility under terms offered in its original May 2019 contract with the City of Lakeland.
Amazon proposes to build an additional 464,000-square-foot facility, nearly twice the size. Other proposed features would include a new fuel farm to store up to 24,000 gallon of gasoline and 72,000 gallons of jet fuel, additional employee parking with truck bays for ups to 350 vehicles.
Amazon did not respond to requests from The Ledger to provide further details about the proposed plans.
Lakeland plans new surveys of its seven historic districts
Lakeland contains seven historic districts, designated between 1985 and 2004.
The city is overdue to update its inventories of buildings with historic status within those districts, said Emily Foster, the city’s senior planner for historic preservation.
Lakeland plans to conduct new surveys of the districts that likely will result in many houses being added as “contributing structures,” Foster said.
“That’s kind of a maintenance thing that should be done really every 10 years, and we’re a little bit past that for most of our historic districts,” Foster said. “So we’re trying to just update that survey information, and that may possibly add more properties as contributing buildings. It will also look at what’s currently considered contributing, to ensure that it’s still contributing.”
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On Mother s Day, The Chop Shop in downtown Lakeland remained closed, unable to staff the restaurant and handle holiday crowds.
The decision to close for the day was just one of many owner Abby Starkey has had to make during the past few months to deal with severe understaffing at her burger joint.
Starkey said because one of her employees had to take the day off for a wedding, the restaurant would have been run by just her and the general manager, a mother of two. Starkey decided she and her staff deserved to enjoy a day off instead. [The staff] work too hard to not get to enjoy it when they do have a special day like Mother s Day, Starkey said. At some stage, you say you know what, screw that couple thousand dollars or whatever, it s not worth it. We re all going to take the day off.