Take a first look inside Amazon’s Cortana fulfillment center, now set to open in mid-2024

Jessica Breaux can remember shopping at Cortana Mall. Now she works for the conglomerate that is building a 3.4 million-square-foot logistics hub at the site.

“I’m pretty sure I bought a prom dress somewhere on this floor a couple of different times,” joked Breaux, a Lafourche Parish native and Amazon’s senior manager of economic development.

Breaux and a handful of other Amazon officials and construction managers led a media tour Tuesday to show the progress of Amazon’s massive Baton Rouge fulfillment center at the old Cortana site. Demolition of the mall began in March 2021 to make way for the development. Seefried Industrial Properties is the developer, and the Conlan Company is the contractor.

“It’s extra special when it’s in your home state,” Breaux said of the fulfillment center.

The $200 million center is now projected to open in mid-2024 after company officials had hoped it could be operational by 2023.

“That can slide either way based upon a number of factors, but that’s what we’re shooting for right now,” Amazon spokesperson Steve Kelly said.

Company officials on Tuesday said the supply chain issues that have plagued the entire construction industry have caused the delay.

“It’s just taking a little bit longer than we initially thought, but we’re making progress,” Kelly said.

Kelly added Amazon has revamped its outlook for its new facilities after its operations footprint “exponentially grew” in 2021 and 2022 to meet a spike in online shopping from the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We’re stressing efficiency at these new buildings that we brought online in 2020 and 2021, and as a result we have pushed out some of these other buildings coming online,” Kelly said. “Nonetheless, this building is going to be coming online.”

Amazon officials stressed they are fully committed to the facility. They plan on hiring at least 1,000 employees for it, and that workforce total won’t be affected by recent corporate layoffs at Amazon, Breaux said.

Hiring of hourly employees should begin about 30 days before the facility opens, Kelly said. The center’s leadership team will be in place before then.

“It’ll be a full-court press when that time comes,” Kelly said of hiring.

Tuesday’s tour provided a glimpse into how the sprawling facility will be able to handle up to 1 million packages per day at its peak.

Much of the building’s structure and interior is complete. Workers on Tuesday were focused on building the hundreds of “pods” — storage shelves made of metal frames and a flexible, plastic-like material — that will hold the thousands of items to be shipped out.

The packages will be sorted by a futuristic combination of robots and conveyors guided by humans, algorithms and QR codes. Humans will operate floor robots, only a couple feet tall, that can move the “pods” as needed so workers can pull out items.

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The conveyors, which twist and turn throughout much of the building’s five floors, will help guide the packages to workers who will send them off to their next destination.

The Cortana facility will not ship packages directly to consumers. Instead, those packages will be sent to Amazon’s sortation center in Port Allen before being moved to a “delivery station,” such as its facilities off Siegen Lane or its Elmwood center in Jefferson Parish, before being sent to its destination.

“It’s a well-orchestrated ballet,” said Divina Mims, an Amazon spokeswoman.