Hartford Business Journal

www.HartfordBusiness.com • August 24, 2020 • Hartford Business Journal 13 and-mortar retail activity. Others, however, believe those fears are misguided. Timothy Phelan, president of the Connecticut Retail Merchants Associa- tion, said he welcomes Amazon's grow- ing presence in the state because it helps generate a significant amount of tax revenue and creates thousands of jobs with wages starting at $15 an hour. In 2013, Phelan urged state lawmak- ers to force Amazon to begin collecting Connecticut's 6.35% sales tax with the hope of generating approximately $15 million a year in additional sales taxes. It's not exactly clear how much Ama- zon generates in Connecticut tax rev- enue annually, but the state collected about $250 million in online retail sales tax revenue in fiscal 2020, according to the Department of Revenue Services. "We feel as long as the field is level, and everybody plays by the same set of rules, we just allow the market to dic- tate," he said. "The fact that Amazon is growing in Connecticut just heightens the importance of every retailer hav- ing an e-commerce site themselves." Amazon's store at Norwalk's SoNo Collection mall and its pursuit of other vacant mall space nationally, Phelan said, is encouraging because it shows the company believes consumers still value an in-person shopping experience. He added that increased competition from Amazon will also pressure local retailers to innovate their sales strategies. "I'm confident we have enough retailers in Connecticut that will give consumers enough choice to compete," Phelan said. "Consumers have many choices, and that's the kind of mix we want to see." Recent growth Two of Amazon's latest projects in Connecticut marked major mile- stones for the town's of Cromwell and Windsor. Jim Burke, Windsor's economic development director, said Amazon will become the town's largest em- ployer with about 2,700 employees after it debuts its second $230-mil- lion fulfillment center on former tobacco farmland on Kennedy Road in the fourth quarter of 2021. Amazon first broke into Connecti- cut in 2015 with the launch of its 1.2 million-square-foot fulfillment center on Old Iron Ore Road. Today, Burke said the site employs more than 1,700 full- and part-time workers. The town's largest employers, he said, include The Hartford Financial Services Group and Voya Financial, which currently employ about 2,000 and 1,500 workers, respectively. In Cromwell, Amazon in recent weeks debuted what officials are call- ing the first large-scale development in the northern tier of the town. Town officials had been hoping a major tenant would occupy the 120 County Line Dr. facility that Indiana developer Scannell Properties — which is also constructing Amazon's new Windsor facility — had been marketing for more than a year before Amazon committed to the property this past winter. The so-called "speculative'' devel- opment is rarely seen these days in Greater Hartford's commercial-indus- trial market since the 2008 financial crisis triggered the Great Recession. Stuart Popper, Cromwell's direc- tor of planning and development, said he believes the 36-acre Amazon operation could attract additional industrial developments to the area. "Everyone was going, 'this is ei- ther a brilliant move or a disaster,' " Popper said of Scannell building the facility without a tenant dedicated to the project. "It looks like a bril- liant move now." Amazon's 1.2 million-square-foot distribution hub on 200 Old Iron Ore Road in Windsor was the company's first in Connecticut. PHOTO | HBJ FILE

• Cover