The small Prince George’s County, Maryland, town of Cheverly is the site of a proposed Amazon delivery station. However, its elected leaders are now raising concerns about the impact it would have on the community.
At a Monday online meeting of the Cheverly Green Infrastructure Committee and the Cheverly Planning Board, town leaders discussed the plans for the one-story building that would be constructed in an industrial area.
The proposed site once housed a Smithfield smokehouse and meatpacking operation.
“This project will affect all of Cheverly, first and foremost, because of traffic,” said Mayor Laila Riazi. “There’s an extraordinary amount of traffic that comes in with this project.”
The site at 5801 Columbia Park Road would require the construction of a collector road, which the mayor said could raise environmental problems close to neighborhoods.
“When you’re looking at a community, which has classically been subjected to the worst of the environmental and economic discrimination and now we’re talking about an 80-foot-wide collector road, which would not only damage but would go directly behind homes on 62nd Avenue,” Riazi said.
The Amazon facility and the proposed road fit with county development plans. It would be an Amazon delivery station, where tractor-trailer trucks would bring in packages from larger regional warehouses for pickup and delivery by Amazon vans.
The town leaders are hoping to delay a preliminary hearing on the plan that is scheduled July 16.
