An Amazon fulfillment center in St. Lucie County is temporarily closing on Sept. 17, with 850 employees potentially losing their jobs this fall.<\/p>\n
Amazon told WPTV the closure of the facility, located just south of Midway Road at 7600 LTC Parkway, will last two years.<\/p>\n
WATCH BELOW: Amazon facility to close for 2 years, potentially impacting 850 employees<\/p>\n
“We should be able to help a large number of these employees,” said Maureen Saltzer with the St. Lucie County Economic Development Council (EDC).<\/p>\n
The company and Saltzer said Amazon is investing $200 million to transform the site into a new fulfillment center.<\/p>\n
Employees found out about the closure this week.<\/p>\n
“They have four months, which is a great amount of time to be able to make adjustments and find other opportunities,” said Saltzer.<\/p>\n
Saltzer said Amazon will give employees a four-week severance package and help with health benefits.<\/p>\n
She added that the EDC and other agencies are helping place impacted staff at other jobs for the time being.<\/p>\n
“Luckily, we do have multiple new operations opening up over the next several months right here in Port St. Lucie,” said Slatzer. “And also some in Fort Pierce that will be able to absorb some of these employees.”<\/p>\n
Amazon said staff can transfer to one of 30 Amazon facilities across South Florida.<\/p>\n
The company released the following statement:<\/p>\n
“When this facility reopens in mid-to-late 2028, it will employ approximately 1,000 people, and everyone from the site will have the option to return at that time.”<\/p>\n
“Obviously, two years is a long time, but they’d be more than welcome back,” said Saltzer.<\/p>\n
Amazon said orders will be fulfilled elsewhere, and customers will not be impacted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Amazon fulfillment center in St. Lucie County is temporarily closing on Sept. 17, with 850 employees potentially…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":264028,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[171,173,172],"class_list":["post-264027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-port-st-lucie","tag-port-st-lucie","tag-port-st-lucie-headlines","tag-port-st-lucie-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264027\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}