Amazon is going big — really big — in Chicago, unveiling plans for a 230,000-square-foot mega-store outside the city that would be larger than the average Walmart and nearly big enough to swallow two Targets whole, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The move is Amazon’s boldest brick-and-mortar gamble yet — and arguably its riskiest — as the e-commerce giant tries once again to crack a crowded, unforgiving big-box market it has repeatedly struggled to conquer.
The planned store in Orland Park, Illinois, would split its massive footprint in half: one side for groceries, household staples, and prepared food, the other for an unusually large back-of-house operation designed to fulfill online orders and support Amazon’s trademark convenience.
“It’s purpose-built for what we see retail customers demand today,” Katie Jahnke Dale, a lawyer representing Amazon, told local officials this month.
Amazon is pitching the store as a friction-free hybrid of online and in-person shopping. Customers could order alternate sizes or colors at in-store kiosks, schedule bulky items to be loaded directly into their cars, and pick up online orders without ever stepping into the retail aisles.
Local officials worried the building would function more like a warehouse than a store — concerns Amazon dismissed, saying the massive fulfillment space is needed to keep online orders and in-store shopping separate.
But Amazon’s big-box ambitions come with baggage.
The company has closed dozens of physical retail locations, slashed its once-hyped Amazon Go cashierless stores to just 14 nationwide, and stumbled badly with its Amazon Fresh rollout before revamping the concept. Even now, Fresh remains a work in progress in a market already saturated with grocery options.
Analysts say Amazon’s size — and its data — are both its biggest advantage and its biggest bet.