Humboldt County schedules hearing on proposed Amazon warehouse near airport

An Amazon warehouse planned for McKinleyville’s Airport Business Park is moving into Humboldt County’s formal review process, putting a large industrial project on the table for a community that will have to weigh jobs and commercial activity against truck traffic, airport-adjacent land use and neighborhood impacts.

County officials scheduled a public meeting for 6 p.m. Wednesday, April 29, at Azalea Hall next to Pierson Park in McKinleyville. The meeting will focus on a permit application for a proposed Amazon Distribution Facility in the Airport Business Park, with county officials saying residents will have more opportunities to comment before any final approval or denial.

The proposal, received by the Humboldt County Planning & Building Department on Oct. 21, 2025, calls for a 40,290-square-foot commercial warehouse and parking areas on six parcels totaling about 9.4 acres. Local reporting has identified the site as 3110 Boeing Avenue. The project description also includes a separate lot for fleet vans and employee parking, along with three stormwater ponds, all of it tucked into a business park close to the California Redwood Coast-Humboldt County Airport.

Amazon has said it planned to open a delivery station in Humboldt County to better serve customers in the region, describing the site as a last-mile distribution warehouse. The application names Sonya Kinz, a senior development manager with Panattoni Development Company, as the applicant. Panattoni is a major industrial real estate firm that regularly handles warehouse and logistics work for large companies.

The project’s economic case is likely to draw the sharpest debate. Supervisor Steve Madrone has argued that Amazon jobs may not fit Humboldt County’s needs and said the project would not qualify as a distribution center that would increase sales tax for the county. That puts the hearing at the center of a broader local question: whether a national retailer’s logistics footprint belongs in one of the county’s key coastal planning areas, or whether that space should be reserved for other kinds of development.

The county has framed the April 29 session as part of the permit review process rather than a final vote. That matters because the Airport Business Park sits inside Humboldt County’s coastal planning framework, and the Planning Commission’s regular schedule in Eureka underscores how land-use decisions in the county move through a formal, layered process before any project is locked in.