Amazon has opened DEN9, its 3.5 million square foot robotics fulfillment center at 6425 Byrd Drive in Loveland, Colorado. Trammell Crow Company developed the approximately $400 million facility on a 151.8 acre site. First packages began moving through the center in July 2026, roughly three years after the developer had expected to deliver the completed shell.
What is now running on Byrd Drive
The ribbon cutting took place on 4 September 2026, five days before Amazon’s Colorado team guided local officials through the facility. BizWest reported from the opening tour that packages had already been moving through the building since summer, with a workforce of 1,100 sorting several million packages each week, still well below the capacity required during the holiday peak.
Automation handles most of the operation. The Loveland Reporter-Herald reported that the installed fleet numbers more than 6,700 robots, including more than 200 Proteus autonomous mobile units that transport carts across the ship dock and use illuminated eyes to indicate to nearby workers that they have been detected. Approximately 30 miles of conveyor connect the various systems. General manager Eric Ng told the newspaper that starting wages average around $23 an hour.
Most staffing is concentrated on the ground floor. The upper levels are Amazon Robotics floors dedicated to inventory storage and automated retrieval, while the facility processes items weighing less than 50 pounds, leaving televisions and other oversized goods to the Aurora fulfillment center. Sam Bailey, Amazon’s senior manager of economic development policy, told CBS Colorado during the opening that the facility is “not just an asset for Colorado, but for the Mountain West” and that employment will increase during peak season.
A programme that slipped by roughly three years
The entitlement process moved relatively quickly. Loveland City Council annexed the 151.8 acre parcel on 7 September 2021 following a proposal from Trammell Crow Company, and building plans received approval as early as 16 December 2021. Amazon.com Services LLC subsequently closed on the property on 3 March 2022, paying $9.4 million to three family trusts, equivalent to approximately $62,000 per acre. Ron Kuehl of Realtec Commercial Real Estate Services, who brokered the transaction, said he had worked on the deal for roughly four years, including three years of direct negotiations, and attributed the extended process to the expense of bringing utilities and roads to the property.
Construction began that same month. In January 2023, Trammell Crow Company told BizWest it expected to hand over the building in August 2023, while the approved plans anticipated an opening in late 2024. Neither milestone was achieved. By mid-2023, the completed exterior and largely empty parking lot had fueled continued speculation that Amazon had abandoned the project, and the Coloradoan reported that city economic development director Kelly Jones had been pushing back against those rumours for nine months while Amazon maintained that construction was moving forward. The target was subsequently shifted to 2025 and then to the second half of 2026.
Marc Wulfraat of logistics consultancy MWPVL International told BizWest in December 2025 that the delays were self-imposed, suggesting Amazon had likely used the pause to rethink how it would fulfill and sort packages across the region instead of opening the facility in its originally planned configuration. The final equipment count lends support to that interpretation. Amazon and local reports were still describing a 5,000-robot fit-out as recently as December 2025, while the fleet ultimately commissioned is more than one-third larger.
Compared with a similar Amazon project, the delay is significant. Amazon’s Charlton, Massachusetts robotics center, measuring 2.8 million square feet with a stated investment exceeding $300 million, broke ground in the same month as Loveland and began operations in November 2024, around 20 months before the first package moved through the Larimer County facility.
From 600,000 square feet to 3.87 million
Loveland’s original announcement significantly understated the eventual size of the project. The city’s March 2022 press release described a sortable fulfillment center of more than 600,000 square feet. Building plans obtained by BizWest through the Colorado Open Records Act revealed a much larger facility, while the approved site development plan listed 3.87 million square feet: 823,871 square feet on the first floor and approximately 664,750 square feet on each of the four floors above. The document’s narrative gives a total of 3.85 million square feet, while the individual floor plates add up to 3.48 million. Only 46,500 square feet was designated for office space.
The site’s zoning enabled that scale. The heavy logistics designation covering the western half allows buildings up to 125 feet tall and requires just one parking space per 2,500 square feet. That produced a minimum requirement of 1,548 stalls compared with the 1,801 included in the approved plans, along with 379 trailer spaces and 62 loading docks. Later reporting counted 66 docks. Twenty-three percent of the property was designated as open space, while the building occupies 74.69 of the 151.8 acres, leaving approximately 77 acres under Amazon’s ownership. Kuehl noted in 2022 that the amount of surplus land would not be clear until construction was completed, making the remaining portion of the site the most obvious near-term development question along the corridor.
Opposition to the project was limited but did occur. Workers for a Safe Larimer County filed suit against the city in October 2021, arguing that Loveland had failed to prepare an Annexation Impact Report before approving the annexation. The case was dismissed with prejudice that December. Council members also expressed concerns in September 2021 that the loading docks would be visible from the east, although no amendment followed.
Who paid for the roads, and what the city collects
Jones was clear about the terms offered to Amazon. “We did not offer any incentives or give any other business investments,” she said in 2022. Public spending nevertheless supported infrastructure along the corridor. City engineer Dave Klockeman outlined a cost-sharing arrangement under standard policy in which the developer pays 65 percent of the cost of extending Byrd Drive to Larimer County Road 30 and 60 percent of the cost of additional turn lanes at Crossroads Boulevard. The city covers most of the roundabout where the two arterials meet at Byrd and County Road 30. Removal of the Interstate 25 frontage road between Crossroads and County Road 30, a change included in Loveland’s long-range plan since the 1990s, completes the infrastructure package.
Traffic modelling conducted by Langan Engineering and Environmental Services, which also worked on the Colorado Springs Amazon study, forecast 937 day-shift and 937 night-shift workers and 3,982 daily trips. The analysis concluded that the surrounding network could handle the projected traffic through 2024 with the planned roundabouts and signal improvements in place.
Mayor Patrick McFall told CBS Colorado that he wished the city could collect sales tax on the goods moving through the facility, but it cannot. Loveland does receive tax revenue from the construction activity itself: the city’s use tax rules establish a permit deposit equal to 50 percent of project valuation multiplied by the combined city and county rate, with the amount reconciled against actual material costs and subject to audit for three years following the certificate of occupancy. Ongoing property tax revenue for the city is comparatively modest, as Loveland’s mill levy has remained at 9.564 since 1992, one of the lowest municipal levies in Northern Colorado. No assessed value for the completed facility has been released.
The headline investment figure also remains somewhat unclear. North Forty News reported that Rep. Lauren Boebert’s office valued the project at $400 million on opening day, while McFall described it as exceeding $300 million, without explaining the discrepancy.
Where it sits in Colorado’s industrial pipeline
DEN9 is now the second largest Amazon building in Colorado, behind a Colorado Springs facility that the Reporter-Herald measured at approximately 3.7 million square feet in December 2025. Amazon’s August 2026 accounting of its Colorado footprint listed 11 fulfillment and sortation centers, 10 delivery stations, three rural delivery stations, 23 Whole Foods Market stores, and three solar farms. The company said it had invested more than $20 billion in the state since 2010 and employed more than 20,000 people. Loveland already had the DDE8 delivery station at 4555 Viking Way in Centerra, which handles the final sort before packages are loaded onto vans.
The project’s scale distinguishes it from much of the surrounding development pipeline. Our of the Lovett 76 Logistics Center in Brighton described a 613,758 square foot Class A facility, a more typical Front Range speculative warehouse and roughly one-fifth the floor area of DEN9. Mile High CRE ranked Loveland Commerce Park as the fifth largest US industrial development scheduled for delivery in 2024, when the Denver market had 8 million square feet under construction, ranking 13th nationally and representing approximately 3 percent of existing stock.
Construction cost per square foot also highlights where spending is concentrated in this asset class. The $400 million figure implies approximately $114 per square foot for Loveland. Walmart’s planned Carnesville facility in Georgia, a $1.3 billion investment in 1.5 million square feet, equates to roughly $867 per square foot, a difference that reflects the heavy share of automated equipment in modern fulfillment center budgets compared with the building itself. It has not been publicly established whether Trammell Crow Company’s $400 million figure includes Amazon’s robotics fit-out or refers only to the structure. Amazon has also moved toward producing that equipment itself, confirming in August 2026 a multi-billion dollar robotics plant in East Austin that will supply its warehouse network.
Three issues remain unresolved. Amazon has previously indicated that employment at Loveland could eventually reach as many as 3,000 workers compared with the 1,100 currently on site, but has not provided a schedule for that increase. The company has also not disclosed what it plans to do with the undeveloped 77 acres east of the building.
Project Fact Sheet
- Project Name: Amazon Loveland Fulfillment Center (DEN9), Loveland Commerce Park
- Location: 6425 Byrd Drive, Loveland, Larimer County, Colorado
- Project Value: Approximately $400 million in construction cost, according to a Trammell Crow Company representative speaking to BizWest in 2024. Mayor Patrick McFall described the investment as more than $300 million in September 2026
- Client/Owner: Amazon.com Services LLC
- Developer: Trammell Crow Company, Denver business unit
- Key Components: 3.5 million square feet across five levels, 46,500 square feet of office space, more than 6,700 robots including 200-plus Proteus units, approximately 30 miles of conveyor, 62 to 66 loading docks, 1,801 parking stalls, and 379 trailer stalls
- Site: 151.8 acres annexed and rezoned as a planned unit development, with the building occupying 74.69 acres and 23 percent designated as open space
- Land Cost: $9.4 million, closed 3 March 2022
- Procurement Model: Build-to-suit development on land owned by Amazon
- Construction Start: March 2022
- Operations Start: July 2026, with a ribbon-cutting on 4 September 2026
- Jobs: 1,100 at opening, with Amazon previously indicating potential growth to 3,000
- Incentives: None offered by the City of Loveland, according to city economic development director Kelly Jones in 2022
Project Team
- Owner and Operator: Amazon.com Services LLC
- Developer: Trammell Crow Company
- Traffic and Site Engineering: Langan Engineering and Environmental Services Inc., Lakewood, Colorado
- Site Improvements Planning: Langan International LLC
- Land Sale Broker: Ron Kuehl, Realtec Commercial Real Estate Services
- Approving Authority: City of Loveland, Development Services and Building Division
- General Contractor: Not publicly disclosed
- Architect of Record: Not publicly disclosed
- Site Leadership: Eric Ng, general manager, DEN9
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