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After a high-profile pullback that left some developers in the lurch and other warehouses leased but sitting empty, is Amazon planning an about-face on its footprint contraction?

In a blog post on the company’s website Doug Herrington, head of Amazon’s Worldwide Amazon Stores arm covering its fulfillment operations and online stores, wrote “we have plans to double the number of [same-day delivery] sites in the coming years.”

Amazon spent much of the last year in a high-profile pullback from the huge logistics expansion it undertook in the first two years of the pandemic – partly to the Connecticut industrial market’s benefit – when it saw its headcount and operations double, as Americans engaged in a pullback of their own from online shopping as the pandemic wound down and energy costs soared thanks to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Despite the pullback, the company appeared to go ahead with a large Naugatuck Valley facility last year and then bought a last-mile distribution facility in Orange this week after redeveloping the property from a big-box retail site.

In his blog post, Herrington made the case that the company’s same-day delivery network was still key to its future, saying “our Same-Day Delivery network is not only our fastest way to get products to customers, it is also one of our lowest cost ways.”

The company, Herrington said, is also managing the huge costs associated with running a same-day delivery service by revamping how its distribution network is organized and rolling out advances in the software it uses to predict when customers will want certain products in different parts of the country.