“Better Together” Amazon launches MLI1 in Quad Cities
Amazon celebrated the soft launch opening of their Quad Cities facility with a ribbon cutting today.
General Manager Nate Rudy welcomed local officials to a sneak peak of the first Quad Cities area Amazon facility, located at 2022 Research Parkway, Davenport. The facility is the latest generation of Amazon fulfillment centers covering over 2.3 million square feet on six floors with over 12 miles of conveyance. Known internally as MLI1, the MLI refers to the Quad Cities International Airport in Moline, while the 1 signifies this is the first robotics fulfillment center in the region. 
“We are very excited to be here and to be a great partner in the community,” said Rudy, who has been with Amazon for over 10 years. “Ten days ago, we welcomed our first group of new hires and we’ll welcome over 500 new hires before the end of October.”
After breaking ground a little over two years ago, their leadership and support teams started working on-site in September and have received a warm welcome from the community, according to Rudy.
For the remainder of 2023 leading into Amazon’s peak sales period, the QC location will operate as a cross dock facility, where new products are received from vendors and then sent to other Amazon facilities to pick, pack and ship items to customers. This is the second time Amazon has chosen to launch a fulfillment facility first as a cross dock.
In the first quarter of 2024, Amazon plans to fully launch and celebrate the grand opening of the facility as the 105th Amazon robotics fulfillment center, shared Rudy. Next year, Amazon will grow to over 1,000 employees.
Davenport Mayor Mike Matson thanked all the public and private partners who helped make this project happen. “Economic development in our region is possible because of the fantastic partnerships we have forged throughout the community.”
“Here we are standing in a facility, a world-renowned business, that is bringing jobs to the Quad Cities,” said Matson. When fully operational, Amazon will become one of the Quad Cities region’s top employers.
“This is really an exciting day for our entire community and I’m thrilled to welcome another Fortune 100 company to this community - an iconic brand that does incredible things beyond just creating jobs,” said Mara Downing, Vice President of Global Branding & Communications at John Deere and Board Chair for the Quad Cities Chamber. “I hope that you enjoy the Quad Cities as much as John Deere has over the past 105 years.”
Rudy shared the compensation packages for their frontline employees not only include great pay starting at $17.50 per hour, but also provide comprehensive benefits for full-time employees including health, vision and dental insurance from their first day. In addition, Amazon offers vacation time and paid time off, a 401K with a company match, 20 weeks of paid leave for new parents and prepaid college tuition. Amazon is running day and night shifts, a total of six schedules of mostly 10-hour shifts.
Amazon Assistant General Manager Kyle Stratford explained that when Amazon fully launches next year, it will be a fulfillment center, or the first stop where the product goes after it comes from a cross dock. The QC facility will unbox product, if needed, when it arrives and then send it to the storage area on the top four floors of the building. Once it’s stowed and scanned, their website knows the product is now available and ready to be shipped. From here, the items will be shipped to a sort center which sorts the product into zip codes to prepare for delivery. Lastly, the product is sent to a delivery station for delivery to the customer.
Next year, the QC facility is going to be one of the second sites ever to launch a mini delivery station inside this facility, said Stratford. Currently the closest delivery station is Iowa City. Quad Citizens can anticipate seeing more blue delivery vans, or local delivery, in the area next year.
While giving a tour of the site, Stratford pointed out, “One really cool thing is that all our official vests say ‘Better Together’ on them, which is our motto for the site, kind of an ode to not only teamwork being the most efficient way to go about things, but also the Quad Cities themselves being better as the Quad Cities and not as individual cities.”
Volunteering is important to this local team according to Rudy, which has already given 3,500 hours of volunteered time across 74 events with 30 different organizations in the QC, making it the 2nd highest across Amazon US.
Background
The QC is an ideal Midwest location for logistics companies. “It took many partners to attract Amazon to the QC, and this is a perfect example of how great collaboration works,” said Chamber Vice President of Business & Economic Growth Tami Petsche who helped lead the project. “The Quad Cities Chamber works with companies interested in locating in our region regularly. Our role is to showcase why they should choose the QC. In this case, Amazon was attracted by our central Midwest location, the easy access to their customers via our interstates, and access to a laborshed of more than 580,000 individuals including a pipeline of workers with the skill sets needed for their operation.”
Read the background story when Amazon first announced it was coming to the QC.
Timeline
- July 2021: Starts as greenfield site
- October 2021: Site buildout starts
- January 2022: Exterior building mostly completed
- July 2022: Building construction completed
- March 2023: Amazon logos added to the building, interior build-out of conveyance underway
- October 2023: Soft launch, interior final construction in progress
- October 15, 2023: First day