After more than 50 hours of public hearings and debate lasting some eight months last year, Amazon announced Thursday it was pulling out of its proposed massive warehouse project at the former George Westinghouse Research and Technology Park in Churchill.
Amazon said in a statement that it has decided not to pursue building at the site, located off the Churchill exit of Parkway East, but did not offer specific reasons for scrapping the project. The company said it weighs a variety of factors when deciding where to develop future sites.
“It is common for us to explore multiple locations simultaneously and adjust based on our operational needs,” an Amazon spokeswoman said in a statement. “While we have decided not to pursue the site in Churchill, we are still committed to being a good neighbor, corporate citizen and community partner.”
Amazon, the Seattle-based corporate giant that has revolutionized e-commerce, still has more than 4,000 people working in the Pittsburgh area and has invested some $2 billion in the region’s economic growth, including employee wages.
Related:
• Churchill Council approves application for controversial Amazon warehouse
• Churchill residents protest Amazon development
• Some Churchill residents oppose Amazon
Alex Graziani, Churchill Borough manager, also could not be reached for comment Thursday night.
An organizer of the opposition group, Churchill Future, was ecstatic that Amazon has scrapped plans for the warehouse at Westinghouse Electric Corp.’s former research facility.
“We’re very happy. It doesn’t surprise me because we fought so hard. We raised money for an attorney. We took them to court,” said Nicole Phillips, who said tractor trailers would have passed in front of her house and in the rear had Amazon gone ahead with the plans.
The citizens group had organized protests and attended the countless public meetings and hearings before Churchill Council approved the plans. The group responded by filing a challenge in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court, claiming the project failed to meet several requirements in the borough’s zoning ordinance related to noise, traffic and visual impression.
Hillwood Development Co., a Ross Perot company based in Texas, partnered with Amazon in developing the proposed 2.6-million square-foot warehouse on the 114-acre site. James Fuller, a spokesman for Hillwood, could not be reached for comment Thursday night.
Hillwood had claimed the project along Beulah Road would have brought Churchill more than 1,100 jobs and about $11 million annually in tax revenue. Churchill is one of 12 municipalities in the Woodland Hills School District.
But Churchill Future, in its lawsuit, said the distribution center “is wholly inconsistent with past development of the borough and its current character.”
Churchill Council approved the plans by a 5-2 vote on Dec. 12. It was the culmination of 14 days of public hearings spread over about eight months and more than 55 hours of testimony.
The court challenge contended that three of the council members who voted for the project had expressed their support for it before the hearings, so they should have abstained from the December vote. Without their votes, the project would have been blocked with a 2-2 vote.
Churchill Future also alleged in its filing that the developer’s traffic impact study failed to evaluate the impact of the number of trucks and traffic near homes there.
Phillips said she knew some people who were so opposed to the possibility of Amazon building a distribution center in their town that they moved to another community.
“We did not move here (Churchill) for this” to be located in the community, Phillips said.
As the battle in Churchill lingered over several months last year, there was speculation that Amazon might want to locate its warehouse distribution center at a proposed 1-million-square-foot facility at a site about a mile from the New Stanton exit of the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
Staff Writer Megan Guza contributed to this report.
Joe Napsha is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Joe at 724-836-5252, jnapsha@triblive.com or via Twitter .
Categories:
Allegheny | Business | Local | Regional | Top Stories | Woodland Hills