So far, Amazon’s brick-and-mortar efforts haven’t been wildly successful, but the company is betting that bigger is better.
The online retail king announced plans to open a 230,000-square-foot retail facility in the Chicago suburb of Orland Park, Illinois. The big-box store’s 35-acre campus has about 800 parking spaces and, perhaps best of all, doesn’t require shoppers to be Amazon Prime members.
It is expected to open no earlier than 2027.
The Orland Park Village Board gave final approval to the store Monday night, despite some objections from community members in attendance.
While the store has a large footprint, not all of the space is dedicated to retail shopping, with a focus on groceries, general merchandise and food prepared on site, similar to Costco. Amazon said more than half of the building will be reserved for back-office operations, but it did make clear it would not be used as a distribution center or warehouse.
If this iteration is successful, Amazon could open other large stores in other cities. The company holds an absolute leadership position in online sales, but the category accounts for less than 20% of the overall U.S. retail market, and most consumers still purchase products in physical stores.
Amazon had success with Whole Foods, but the chain was already successful when Amazon acquired it. Other retail businesses are not doing so well. The company operates more than 50 Amazon Fresh stores and 14 Amazon Go convenience stores, but that number used to be nearly double. Amazon has been closing these retail stores since 2023.
