Tesla has secured a massive new building in Illinois

Tesla has secured a long-term lease on a massive new building located in Pontoon Beach, Illinois, near St. Louis.

It’s not clear what the building will be used for, but it’s likely going to be a giant parts distribution center.

Tesla likes big buildings, and it has built many of them from Gigafactory Nevada to Gigafactory Texas, which are some of the biggest buildings in the world.

According to a local report from the Courier-Tribune, Tesla is taking over a large warehouse covering over half a million square feet:

The company signed a lease for nearly 667,000 square feet of space at Gateway TradePort, a planned industrial park in Pontoon Beach, Illinois, according to a market report from commercial real estate firm CBRE.

The size of the building would indicate that it is too big to just be another Tesla service center, especially considering Tesla is currently building a large new service center in St. Louis.

The report couldn’t pinpoint what Tesla planned to do at the location:

Neither the company nor the developer, NorthPoint Development of Kansas City, immediately responded to a request for comment. Tesla’s website also did not list any jobs available in Southern Illinois.

While there were no job listings for the location at the time of publication, Tesla has since added several job listings for Pontoon Beach related to inventory:

In the job listings, Tesla references a “highly dynamic parts distribution center”:

Tesla is looking for a motivated and experienced Supervisor for our highly dynamic parts distribution center in Saint Louis, MO. This position will provide supervision of day-to-day operations including receiving, stocking, shipping and all transactions related to said activities. The Supervisor, Parts & Service Warehouse, will also ensure efficiency and accuracy of stocking and organizing parts inventory. This individual will work closely with the Parts & Service Buyers, Logistics and Quality teams, as well as with internal and external customers around the globe. This role will report directly to the Associate Manager, Parts & Service Warehouse. We currently have openings for both day shift and swing shift, but flexibility is required.

It sounds like the new location is going to be a giant new parts distribution center for Tesla’s service division.

Recently, we reported on Tesla putting a lot of effort into “revolutionizing” its vehicle service and reducing wait times for repair in North America.

Parts inventory is actually a critical part of making that happen since service centers often have to wait for parts before completing repairs.

If Tesla can have a large parts distribution center right in the middle of the country, like near St. Louis, it could help get parts to service centers all across North America a lot faster.

The massive new building that Tesla secured is still under construction, and therefore, it’s not exactly clear when Tesla can complete the new parts distribution center, but it should be relatively soon if it’s already hiring for it.

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