Scott Green remembers when the Gypsum Town Council met in a refurbished garage on First Street. Times have changed.

Green this week said confirmation of an Amazon “last mile” facility near the Eagle County Regional Airport is going to be a “big deal” for the town. The facility, he said, is a testament to what town officials have done over the past 25 years or so.

In a brief email this week, Nissa LaPoint, a regional PR specialist for Amazon, confirmed that the online retail giant has “purchased/leased” property with the intent of opening a facility, and that “a lot of work is going into getting the facility operational.”

Green recalled the days in the early 1990s when it was a big deal when the Wylaco supply company coming to town was also a big deal. At that time, the town’s drywall plant was the largest commercial operation in town.

Over the years, town officials worked on growing the size of the town through annexations, including the airport property, as well as the Airport Gateway property and the surrounding areas. That eventually led to bringing Costco to town, as well as numerous other commercial ventures, including a Tesla dealership and service center.

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“We did things really smart without leveraging taxpayers,” Green said, adding that when the town built its recreation center with a voter-approved sales tax increase, the Town Council at the time pledged to repeal that tax when the facility was paid off. The council upheld that pledge in 2014.

That growth “makes me pretty proud,” Green said.

Amazon’s efforts to build the facility were pretty hush-hush, Green said, noting he had “very limited details” about the facility.

Green said his company, Scott Green Excavating, tried to bid on the construction work, and the project in its early stages wasn’t under Amazon’s name as it came through the town’s approval process.

Reached by phone, local Realtor Scooter Slaughter said a last mile facility “would be nice to have.” But, he added, “Where’s everybody going to live that’s going to work there? How many jobs need to be filled if they’re not already here? That’s the question I get a lot.”