AMAZON IS CONSTRUCTING a delivery center in Mendocino County, and its location is just north of Ukiah at the Friends of Liberty Industrial Park.
According to site plan documents obtained from the county, Amazon purchased just under 14 acres at the business park. The new facility, which the documents show will cover 59,000 square feet, is being built by Alston Construction, a Sacramento-based contractor. The facility is planned for 1775 N. State St. in Ukiah.
According to Natalie Banke, Amazon’s West Coast public relations manager, the facility should be finished later this year, though she did not give an exact date of completion.
The popular e-commerce company announced in spring 2025 that it would be tripling its delivery stations in rural areas throughout the United States. Amazon said it planned to invest around $4 billion into its rural delivery project to bring quick delivery to customers in less populated areas.
In a press release issued by Amazon last year, the company said, “This investment will also grow our rural delivery network’s footprint to more than 200 delivery stations, and we estimate it will create over 100,000 new jobs and driving opportunities through a wide range of full-time, part-time and flexible positions in our buildings and on the roads.”
In an interview with The Mendocino Voice, Ross Liberty, the owner of the Friends of Liberty Industrial Park and creator of Factory Pipe, which makes exhaust systems for motorsports vehicles and boats, said that he was originally going to sell the land to Adventist Health, a nonprofit health organization, but the deal did not go through.
“We were working with Adventist Health. They were going to put in a huge hospital there — probably a $800 million project,” Liberty said.
Liberty had been eager to see interest from Adventist Health because of the company’s potential to bring a large number of health care jobs to the area. After that deal fell through, Liberty was approached by Amazon with the help of John Lazaro, a local broker at Coldwell Banker Mendo Realty, and Ukiah-based company Selzer Realty Property Management. Lazaro helped coordinate the deal with Amazon and Selzer Realty, and after negotiations near the end of 2024, the lot was officially sold to Amazon in 2025.
“We had it listed with Selzer Realty. They connected with Amazon through a broker, and that’s how it goes,” Liberty said. “I was happy to make the sale, it was a lot of money, but it wasn’t my preferred goal. My preferred goal was jobs for the community.”
According to Liberty, Amazon will be opening what is called a “last-mile delivery center,” which is a smaller facility compared to Amazon’s other fulfillment and sortation centers.
At these facilities, packages arrive from the sortation centers and are scanned and organized into different delivery routes. These packages are then picked up by Amazon delivery drivers or independent contractors, called Amazon Flex drivers.
The Mendocino Voice sent a list of questions to Amazon regarding the number of jobs the delivery center would bring to Ukiah, what those jobs would look like, and how the delivery center could benefit the local community, but Amazon did not respond in time for publication.
However, it was estimated by the city of Redding that its new last-mile delivery center, which will open this year, will hire more than 100 full-time and part-time employees.
Amazon has a long history of labor and wage complaints filed by employees, and various lawsuits have alleged that the company has violated California labor laws and treated workers unfairly.
One of those allegations is a part of a class-action lawsuit, Martinho v. Amazon.com Inc., where the plaintiff alleges Amazon required new hires at delivery centers to attend trainings and onboarding sessions without pay, which violates state wage laws. The case is still pending in federal court.
Ukiah Mayor Susan Sher said in an interview that she does not believe Amazon will be an ethical employer, and is worried for local residents who choose to work at the delivery center.
“I’m very concerned about how our local folks who get jobs there are going to be treated,” Sher said. “There’ll be certainly a lot of jobs, but if you’ve read anything about people who work at these fulfillment centers, they’re low-pay, dead-end, dangerous jobs for the most part.”
Sher has also questioned the vetting process for Amazon’s Ukiah project and said she doesn’t understand why more reviews weren’t done before the deal was completed.
“No public hearing, no public process. The public had no say in this. That’s one of the biggest things that bugs me,” Sher said. “I just don’t see any upside to this at all except, as they said, people want to get their online orders sooner. That’s not a reason to subject local people to all the downsides.”
The land where Amazon is building its last-mile delivery center is located on the outskirts of northern Ukiah, a region that was going to be annexed as part of a widely contested proposal by the city of Ukiah. However, the Ukiah City Council decided to scale back the amount of land it plans to include in a potential annexation and is currently revising its proposal.
Liberty is also an avid member of No Ukiah Annexation, a local organization that has been advocating against the city’s proposal to annex unincorporated land.
The Mendocino Voice reached out several times to Julia Krog, director of Mendocino County Planning and Building Services, for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication.
Supervisor Madeline Cline, whose District 1 includes the land where the Amazon facility is being built, also declined to comment.
This story originally appeared in The Mendocino Voice.