Change in Plans for Amazon Fulfillment Center at Atlantic City Race Course

Amazon has changed its plan to convert the shuttered Atlantic City Race Course in Mays Landing into a fulfillment center.

Amazon is still interested in using the race track site. But they have made big adjustments to the facility they plan to build.

The Press of Atlantic City reports that Amazon had originally planned to build a multi-level building. Now the company is shifting toward making the center a one-floor operation.

A lawyer for Amazon gave a presentation about the project to the Hamilton Township Committee this week.

"Instead of going vertical, it's now lower and now talking up more land area," attorney Joe Paparo said.

Amazon's Planned Automated Storage Facility

An Amazon representative described the fulfillment center as a robotics-sortable facility that uses automated storage and retrieval systems to fulfill customer orders.

Danielle Aristy, an Amazon senior manager of economic development policy, said the technology is the "latest and greatest design".

The products are stored and moved around on racks by a machine referred to as 'Roomba on steroids, according to the Press of Atlantic City reporting.

Products are placed on a rack system and then moved by a machine that Amazon representatives described as a “Roomba on steroids.”

Amazon said typically this type of facility would have 750 employees.

Earlier this year, the Hamilton Township Planning Board gave the okay to divide the 250-acre site into two lots.

The Amazon lot will be about 145 acres, according to the Press of Atlantic City.

The Decline of the Atlantic City Race Course

The Atlantic City Race Course opened back in the 1940s and was quite successful for a number of decades. Casino gaming in Atlantic City began to chip away at the track's fan base in the late 1970s, leading to its slow decline.

In 1998, the one-time Atlantic City Race Track ended its regular schedule of live horse racing, citing increasing costs and diminishing attendance.

After that, the race course held its annual Turf Festival, a six-day return to live racing event each year, which was a state-mandated regulation necessary to keep the track’s simulcast license.

The race track closed its operations for good in 2015. The past 11 years have not been kind to the old grandstand and the race track grounds.

I have fond memories of going to my first horse races at the old Atlantic City Race Track and trying to learn the basics of the sport with my childhood friends.

An old article in the Press of Atlantic City describes the track's grand opening as quite a day.

 "The Atlantic City Race Course opened July 22, 1946, when 28,000 fans packed the facility, the largest inaugural day racetrack crowd in history.

 

Among those in attendance were Sinatra, Hope and Princess Grace of Monaco. Princess Grace was the daughter John B. Kelly, the track president and one of the four businessmen who founded it."