(Image: Amazon Fresh)
Company officials have confirmed to CHS the Central District store in the new mixed-use development at 23rd and Jackson will be part of the company’s first Amazon Fresh groceries to open in its home state of Washington.
We are proud to be bringing hundreds of good jobs with benefits to the Seattle area as we prepare to open the first Amazon Fresh grocery stores in our home state of Washington,” Roetta Greene Elton, district manager of Amazon Fresh grocery stores, said in a company statement on the openings. “We’re excited to provide customers with new, low-priced grocery stores in their neighborhoods and look forward to contributing positively to the community.”
Amazon’s big message about the big new store that has risen where the neighborhood’s Red Apple grocery used to stand focused on one important component: jobs.
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“The company plans to fill hundreds of full- and part-time positions, including managerial roles, at stores located in Seattle and Bellevue,” the Amazon announcement reads. “Interested candidates can visit amazonstores.jobs to learn more and apply.”
The company says Amazon Fresh employees will join “more than 80,000 full- and part-time Amazon employees already working in Washington with industry-leading pay and a variety of benefits packages starting from their first day on the job.”
The first jobs listed for the Jackson store as of Monday are for the “Grocery, Food Service, & Kitchen Associate” role — and the “Overnight Grocery, Food Service, and Kitchen Associate.” Pay starts at $17 an hour.
“We look forward to working with Amazon to bring its new Amazon Fresh grocery store to Seattle,” Michelle Merriweather, President and CEO of the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle, said in the Amazon announcement. “This store will create hundreds of new job opportunities for people in the community and provide them with an easily accessible, low-cost option for groceries, which is especially important during these tough times.”
CHS reported last on the Vulcan mixed-use development’s major grocery store tenant and its plans for opening at 23rd and Jackson last year.
Unlike the Amazon Go store that opened on E Pike in early 2020, industry analysts say the new Amazon Fresh concepts will resemble traditional groceries with aisles of goods, delis, and fresh produce, along with pick-up options for the company’s increasingly robust online grocery shopping options. They’ll also represent an alternative to the company’s Whole Foods chain which opened a store at Broadway and Madison in October 2018.
The grocery industry has continued to be a robust consumer of new Central Seattle retail space. PCC opened its newest grocery in the Central District at 23rd and Union last summer.
At 23rd and Jackson, the Red Apple was demolished in early 2018 to make way for construction of the Jackson Apartments,a set of seven-story buildings from developer Vulcan Real Estate with plans for a combined 532 apartments, a whopping 44,000 square feet of commercial space, a massive amount of underground parking with room for more than 500 vehicles, and, yes, a 25,000-square-foot main retail space. Permits indicate a main floor of around 20,000 feet for the store with another 5,000 in the mezzanine, plus 2,400 square feet of kitchen. The store will also include Amazon touches like kiosks where you can talk with its artificial intelligence assistant service Alexa and its “smart” Dash Carts.
Vulcan says a “public plaza and retail pavilion” at 23rd and Jackson will also include “three micro-retail spaces.”
A spokesperson for the secretive project told CHS Monday she could not confirm a planned opening date for the Jackson Amazon Fresh. “I don’t have specific details about an opening date to share today, but we’re working hard to get these stores ready for customers and are actively hiring for hundreds full and part-time roles to help us do that,” the spokesperson writes. “Stay tuned! We’ll be sure to let you know as soon as we can.”
UPDATE 3/31/2021: In an announcement that does not appear to be an April Fool’s joke, the new Amazon Fresh will a Virtual Recruiting Event on Thursday, April 1st:
Amazon Fresh is hosting a virtual recruiting event from 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. PST on Thursday, April 1, to fill hundreds of full- and part-time positions at its new Amazon Fresh grocery store. The store is located at 23rd and Jackson in Seattle’s Central District. This virtual meet-and-greet will give potential candidates the opportunity to speak with an Amazon Fresh store recruiter, ask questions, and learn more about the variety of job opportunities available. Interested candidates can sign up for the event on Indeed. Roles at this Amazon Fresh store start at $17/hour and offer a variety of benefits packages starting on an employee’s first day on the job.
As of Wednesday afternoon, there were around 300 interview slots left. You can learn more about the hiring event here.
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It does all seem pretty secretive. The new development could be doing a lot better job with community relations.
The other day I tried to walk through what I assumed was the public plaza only to be told by a security guard that the area was for residents only. Are they planning to constantly patrol the perimeter of their compound?
Seriously. That plaza is right in between the neighborhood and Walgreens with a nifty crosswalk right there. You couldn’t want through the Red Apple but there wasn’t a plaza there that would provide an easy route.
Just to the West of the Red Apple was a ramp leading down to the Bank of America, the parking lot and 23rd, so you pretty much could walk through it.
The pass through courtyard public! You should contact them and have them remind their security
As someone who used to live in this neighborhood and shop at this Red Apple, I can’t help feeling sad. A unionized, community-centric store has now been replaced with a non-union exploitative behemoth. Our glittering vision of the future always seems to mean that workers and communities get shafted while our money flows to billionaire oligarchs.
Yeah, yeah lefty…..but what about all the JOBS they are creating for the community? Isn’t that a good thing?
I’m left handed. I grew up with the understanding that right handy was ruled from left brain and lefty was ruled by right brain so the joke when I was a kid was only lefties were in their right mind. Now (actual hands aside) this isn’t just a joke it’s sadly more true than I ever have guessed. Proud to be lefty and in my right mind!
<em>Yeah, yeah lefty…..but what about all the JOBS they are creating for the community? Isn’t that a good thing?</em>
Cheering for union grocery jobs to be replaced by non-union jobs is something I would expect from some 19th century robber baron.
Charles Koch, is that you?
No.
Agree! I refuse to put a penny toward anything Amazon. Ever. JB can eat it! What if Amazon took their ridiculous embarrassment of riches and didn’t displace smaller business? What if they didn’t overcharge to snooty shoppers in gentrified spaces but instead went to places in our country where availability to fresh food is scarce (aka food deserts) and build grocery stores that actively work to help keep down the cost of living instead if inflating it with the likes of whole foods and go fresh? What if we stopped patting JB on the back like some sort of giving God when he pledges 10 billion (over a number of years) toward climate solutions with one hand while dumping carbon into environment with the other? If I donated 1 dollar of my money it would be more than JB comparatively. Yes it may create some jobs, but at what cost? I see what’s happened to Seattle and then followed by surrounding cities and then towns since we all started bowing down to the likes of him and his ilk. I say boycott everything JB! Until you do right by us everything you even try to do should fail.
What price point I wonder, pcc is stupid expensive. What we need is lidl or Aldi to bring some competition
If they run true to form, they will automate in a few years, create a new employment vacuum and abandon their EBT customers since they don’t really seem interested in solving their failure to process govt. assistance through scanning.
lolwut? I thought the whole reason they were doing an Amazon Fresh here and not an Amazon Go, in order to make sure everyone in the community can shop there?
Razzle dazzle. Do something to make yourself look one way while you get blinded to what the other hand is doing. Boycott everything JB! End the gentrification! Bring Seattle back to it’s blue collar mostly affordable blue collar funky self! Keep Seattle weird! Miss you real Seattle! If we all stop buying into normalizing the rising cost of living in order to pad his pockets and his like I believe the cost of living could come down. If you shop at one of these it costs a lot to feel like I’m better than others places like whole foods and such, if we stopped paying more simply for a brand name we could make fundamental change. Rights AND responsibilities! Privilege AND responsibilities!
Remember when Seattle was a working class city full of character and funk? Remember when if you had a real job where you actually had to go physically do something you were paid a wage you could survive on because Seattle hadn’t gentrified and allowed everything old to be replaced with new shinny expensive in order to make all the tec brats(that moved here in droves in the late 80’s and 90’s because the northwest was so grungy cool) happy? I always wondered why, if you thought our city was so cool, did you work so hard to change it once you moved here? I should say there, it’s my home town but gentrification has pushed me out. I heart working class blue collar Seattle! Miss you!
We’re not going back in time. You really need to accept the change or move to an area that makes you feelbetter. Nobody wants to read your incessant whining.
BOYCOTT EVERYTHING BEZOS!!!
Why did the apple place go out of business? Was it boycotted too?
Don’t think so. As far as I know Red Apples are independently owned and the running of them is highly variable…. In the past I’ve shopped at 3. A long, long time ago the one that was up on Capitol Hill 15th area – near where the old Taco Time was, the one where the Grocery Outlet is now and the one on Beacon Hill.
The Beacon Hill location (which is still there) was always neat and clean and well stocked, and good for finding specialty Asian or Hispanic items. The other two were nasty…… veggies had to be carefully picked over to find those not rotted, meat was often past edible much less sell by, dry/canned goods could be extremely old and out of date… I’ve never shopped in the Jackson location or at the Bert’s location in Madison Valley, but have not heard bad things about either.