Amazon said Friday that it is building a 600,000-square-foot warehouse in Spokane, the online-retail giant’s first distribution center in Eastern Washington.

The new facility, near the city’s airport, will employ about 1,500 people after it opens sometime next year. It joins more than two dozen new U.S. warehouses Amazon has commissioned in the last two years, part of an effort to cut the time and cost of delivering packages ordered online and cement the company’s wide lead in e-commerce over brick-and-mortar retailers.

The company’s venture east of the Cascades was something of an open secret. Plans for a development near Spokane International Airport called “Project Rose” fit the profile of Amazon’s distribution facilities, though before Friday the company hadn’t confirmed its role.

Like most new Amazon warehouses, the Spokane facility will make use of Amazon robotics. The building — one in a new-generation design of fulfillment centers, as Amazon calls its warehouses — will have four levels of robotics-aided storage and processing, said Lauren Lynch, an Amazon spokeswoman.

The facility, under construction, sits on 80 acres of land that the airport and city and county of Spokane have worked to develop, said Al French, a Spokane County commissioner.

“We’re very excited about getting them here,” French said.

Spokane was among the 238 regions that submitted proposals last year to host Amazon’s second headquarters.

French said he suspected Amazon’s familiarity with Spokane played a role in the company’s selection of the area for a depot.

“I think because of that application, and because we were able to make our story, we got on their radar,” he said.