Big Deal

The Amazon fulfillment center in south Hillsborough County, all 1.1 million square feet of it, is really only a microcosm of CEO Jeff Bezos's grand vision: To outdo anyone and everyone in service and speed.

But it sure is big.

Amazon, in a media and special guests-only event March 30, opened the doors to the cavernous facility, surrounded by farmland, for the first time since it opened Sept. 17, 2014. (A renovation to the facility was completed last fall.) The plant, in Ruskin, had 1,000 employees when it opened, and now has 2,500 people there, who work in harmony alongside hundreds of robots, says facility General Manager Chris Monnot.