State and local officials and Macy’s executives dedicated the new Tulsa County fulfillment center Thursday.
Macy's CEO Terry Lundgren said the building houses state-of-the-art handling equipment, but it won’t work without employees who can run it.
"Four hundred fifty people are already hired here. We're going to ramp that up over time to 1,500 full-time," Lundgren said. "We'll have another 1,000 during the holiday peak period, so creating jobs is what this is really about for so many."
The Tulsa area was among 150 sites competing for the center. It fills orders primarily for the central U.S., ranging from Texas to Minnesota and Missouri to Colorado.
"This building is in part of the country that fills a very, very important white space for us, if you will, that will allow us to get to over 90 percent of all the ZIP codes in America within two days' transit," said Macy's Logistics and Operations President Peter Longo. "That's vitally important to our success."
The 2 million square foot facility has a footprint the size of nearly 14 football fields.
"It's so big that when we poured the foundation for this building, we actually had to calculate and take into consideration the curvature of the Earth," Lundgren said. "Is that scary? I mean, think about that. Curvature of the Earth — I mean, that's science we have to think about here."
The fulfillment center has been running at a limited capacity for about a month. At full speed, Macy’s estimates it can ship 325,000 packages a day.
