The Spokane County Building and Planning Department has received a building permit application for a presumed Amazon.com Inc. distribution center. The application lists the project value at $181 million.

The project site is on the West Plains, on the north side of Geiger Boulevard, south of Spokane International Airport and east of the Interstate 90-Medical Lake interchange.

The size of the project has been a bit fluid since the Journal first reported in April that conceptual plans for the massive fulfillment center were under review by the county. According to the new permit information, the ground floor of the four story, 75-foot-tall center will be nearly 700,000 square feet, which is about 17 acres. The first floor will include more than 40,000 square feet of office and administrative space, with the rest of the ground floor labeled as the process level.

The other floors, described as robotic storage platforms, will be over 648,000 square feet, bringing the total size of the facility to more than 2.6 million square feet.

The codename for the project also has evolved in recent weeks. Originally called Super Duper Project Rose, it's now named Project Rose Fulfillment Center.

A representative for the Seattle-based online retail giant says Amazon declines to confirm or comment on Project Rose.

The site plan for the project is nearly identical to an Amazon fulfillment center being planned in Oklahoma City.

Although the Amazon name isn't mentioned in the project files, county project coordinator Dawn Dompier says a company's name could be attached to the project as soon as a real estate transaction regarding the 79-acre project site is completed. That transaction, however, likely is waiting on the environmental determination, which Dompier says could be completed this week. The environmental determination currently is pending final revisions from two agencies, she says.

Dompier, who is overseeing the environmental review, says she anticipates the county will issue what's called a mitigated determination of nonsignificance, mostly regarding traffic issues.

As first reported in the Journal's May 24 issue, the environmental review information includes potential employee counts for the facility ranging from 1,800 to 3,000 workers.

A grading permit is ready to be issued, she says, but a permit for other site improvements, such as paving sidewalks, curbing, landscaping and drainage, also is pending the environmental review.

Meantime, all agencies also are reviewing the building permit application due to the scope of the project, and Randy Vissia, the county's building and code enforcement director, is negotiating permit fees with project representatives, Dompier says.

Layton Construction Co., of Sandy, Utah, is listed as the contractor on grading permit applications. Layton also is the contractor on a regional Amazon fulfillment center in Salt Lake City that's similar in scope to Project Rose.

T.C. Pursuit Services Inc., of Portland, Ore., submitted the building permit application last week on behalf of the Portland, Ore., office of Trammell Crow Co., which has developed other projects for Amazon