Potential deal with retail giant Amazon may bring thousands of new jobs to the Valley

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- An empty dirt lot could soon make way for a state of the art Amazon.com fulfillment center in Fresno.

Thursday the Fresno City Council is expected to approve a $30-million incentive package to lure Golden State FC-- a subsidiary of Amazon-- to build a 850,000 square foot warehouse at the North Pointe Business Park just off Highway 99 in Southwest Fresno.

"What they've told us and what we've based our projections on is $100 million for the building and $100 million for the equipment. I think those are very conservative and very low, but it's a $200 million investment," said Larry Westerlund, Fresno Economic Development Director.

Chump change for a company that has become the leader in E-commerce sales.

The fulfillment center employ at least 2,000 full-time operating a fully automated system.

"Amazon.com is going all over the country, but this is really a terrific deal for us and we know they need to hit this market. They have stuff in Northern California, they have stuff in Southern California," said Westerlund.

This potential deal comes on the heels of a similar proposal with Nordstrom that was shelved by the clothing retailer because of a couple of poor quarters

"In a lot of way this is actually a better deal than the Nordstrom deal in terms of the larger number of jobs, and we know these folks need to do stuff and they need to do stuff right away," said Westerlund.

Right now when you order on Amazon your package arrives a couple of days later from either northern or southern California. But with a distribution center in Fresno your order could potentially get to your doorstep even sooner.