A four-year waiting game is over in Loveland. Amazon has officially opened its 3.5-million-square-foot fulfillment center off Interstate 25, a building that sat largely empty since construction began, even though it now employs more than 1,100 workers processing packages around the clock.
The facility, known internally within Amazon's network as DEN9, was built at an estimated cost of $400 million and includes 66 loading docks along I-25, according to the Reporter-Herald. Amazon opened the fulfillment center in Loveland after years of construction and delays, as reported by CBS News Colorado. The 152-acre site sits near the Northern Colorado Regional Airport, at the southwest corner of Larimer County Road 30 and I-25, per the same station's report.
Amazon bought the land at 6425 Byrd Drive for $9.4 million in early 2022 and broke ground that March, according to The Levi Group. The City of Loveland approved annexation and rezoning for the site that same month, a deal completed without any local tax incentives for Amazon and facilitated jointly by city staff and developer Trammell Crow Co.
Why the Building Sat Quiet So Long
Despite being physically finished well ahead of this year, the warehouse sat largely vacant, a combination of Amazon's broader post-pandemic corporate pullback in 2022 and internal decisions to retrofit the building with newer robotics and sortation technology. Industry analyst ConstructConnect reported that Amazon delayed or canceled more than a dozen new warehouse builds nationwide in 2022 following the company's first quarterly operating loss since 2014 and a post-pandemic normalization in online shopping demand.
Supply chain consultant Marc Wulfraat, president of MWPVL International, said the Loveland delays were self-imposed, giving Amazon time to upgrade the warehouse with next-generation robotics and sortation systems before launch. Those upgrades were aimed at eliminating intermediate sorting steps in regional package delivery, the article notes.
Inside the Robotics Hub
The 24/7 facility now runs on 30 miles of conveyor belts and roughly 5,000 automated robots designed to process orders weighing under 50 pounds, according to BizWest. It functions as a regional sorting and packing hub. While the facility opened this month with 1,100 employees, Amazon plans to expand staffing to as many as 3,000 workers as operations scale toward full capacity ahead of the holiday shopping season, per the outlet's report.
Loveland Mayor Patrick McFall noted that the city navigated two different city council administrations during the four years between the project's initial approval and its eventual grand opening, according to CBS News Colorado. The mayor emphasized the long-term regional technology and branding benefits the facility is expected to bring.
Part of a Bigger Colorado Buildout
Local frustration during the delay centered on having a massive, silent building sitting on prime land along I-25 for years while the city waited for jobs to materialize. City officials have since celebrated the opening for delivering more than 1,100 initial positions without any municipal tax subsidies.
The Loveland opening fits into a broader statewide expansion. Amazon opened new last-mile delivery stations in Grand Junction, Logan County, and Gypsum in 2025 to speed deliveries across Colorado's Western Slope and Eastern Plains, according to The Levi Group. By mid-2026, Amazon operated 11 fulfillment and sortation centers and 13 delivery stations across Colorado, a footprint Hoodline previously reported includes a 1.2-million-square-foot Aurora warehouse near the company's DEN8 hub.
For now, DEN9 is running with just over a third of its eventual workforce. Its full economic and supply-chain impact on Northern Colorado won't be clear until staffing climbs toward 3,000 workers in the run-up to the holidays.
