Amazon plans to open a warehouse in Redmond, a relatively small facility the company says will accelerate package delivery in nearby cities and rural areas.

The 84,000-square-foot “delivery station” will be the first Amazon has opened in central Oregon. The company says the 14-acre site, which will house products briefly before vans deliver them to homes and businesses, will accelerate deliveries to customers in that part of the state by up to 50%.

“We appreciate the investment Amazon is making in Redmond and the confidence they have in our future growth,” Redmond Mayor Ed Fitch said in a written statement.

Construction starts this month and the site is due to open by the middle of 2026, according to Economic Development for Central Oregon, a regional business agency. Amazon said similar projects elsewhere have created an average of 170 jobs.

The area around Redmond is one of Oregon’s fastest-growing regions, with populations and incomes booming in the neighboring cities of Bend and Prineville.

Last month, Amazon said it would spend $4 billion to add more than 200 delivery stations in rural communities across the U.S. The company opened a similar facility in Klamath Falls last December and plans a site in Tillamook, too.

Amazon already has large warehouses in Troutdale, Portland, Salem and Hillsboro. It plans to open a colossal, 3.8-million-square-foot warehouse in Woodburn in the coming weeks.

The company said it will receive no public incentives for the Redmond site. In 2023, Oregon lawmakers made e-commerce warehouses ineligible for tax breaks that had saved Amazon and other big companies millions of dollars.

While Amazon doesn’t have any physical warehouses east of the Cascades, the company operates an enormous constellation of data centers in Morrow and Umatilla counties and plans to expand to the small city of Arlington in the coming years.

— Mike Rogoway covers Oregon technology and the state economy. Reach him at mrogoway@oregonian.com.

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