FAQs

• In 2022, city planning staff noticed a trend of very large (as large as 600,000 square feet) warehouse development applications being submitted for approval. At the time, there were eight warehouses larger than 100,000 square feet being proposed or under construction, with a total building area of 3.34 million square feet, the equivalent of 58 football fields. 
• City Council became concerned that if the trend continued, the limited amount of industrial zoned areas in the city would be primarily used to house warehouses that provide low-wage positions, and a low number of jobs per acre.  Those industrial zoned areas could otherwise be developed for higher wage manufacturing or research and development jobs. 
• Additional concerns with large warehouses that were identified by staff included an increase in truck traffic and pollution, energy consumption/climate impacts from such large building footprints, and visual impacts. 

• Trends like e-commerce, online shopping, and relocating business activities and manufacturing facilities to be closer to their end destinations have increased global demand for industrial warehousing, resulting in unprecedented warehouse development in recent years. 
• Changes in shopping behavior during the global pandemic have created further demand for warehouse space. 
• One reason for the increase locally in large warehouses is, aside from a single UPS facility, there is no warehouse/distribution facility in Clark County that specifically stores and repackages individual goods intended for direct delivery to residential or business customers. Home deliveries of goods from Amazon and FedEx to Clark County, for example, originate from Portland.

Consultants working for the City examined the key physical, operational and economic differences between e-commerce warehouses and more traditional warehouses to understand possible impacts from the larger facilities.

• Traffic: E-commerce facilities can generate up to four times more daily vehicle trips than traditional warehouses, particularly for fulfillment centers that require extensive sorting.
• Hours of Operation: Typical hours for e-commerce facilities span 24 hours a day, seven days per week. The non-stop activity in modern warehouses is made possible by shift workers and automation. 
• Flow of Goods: E-commerce facilities typically focus less on long-term storage and more on the flow of goods and services. Modern industrial warehouse facilities are often driven by demand, compared to traditional warehouses, where operations are related to storing the largest amount of goods possible. 
• Labor: While traditional warehouses rely on unskilled labor and managerial jobs, highly automated e-commerce facilities offer higher-paying jobs such as automation engineers. With companies such as Amazon investing more in warehouse automation and on-the-job training for skilled labor, observers of these trends indicate that the presence of these high-paying jobs is likely to grow. The 24-hour nature of e-commerce facilities also results in more jobs due to multiple shifts. 
• Economic Impacts. Based on building size/footprint and warehouse jobs created, e-commerce facilities typically entail more local and regional economic impacts (tax revenue, indirect jobs, and new dollars circulating in the economy) than traditional warehouses.  

The proposed code changes are intended to; minimize impacts to residential neighborhoods by only allowing large warehouses in the Heavy Industrial District (IH), reduce visual impacts from blank walls along public streets, and mitigate climate-related impacts by future-proofing buildings for electric power and charging, requiring more trees to be planted, reducing heat retention of roofs, and other measures.