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Amazon physical stores likely coming to Philly within two years, PREIT CEO says

Amazon has been rolling Amazon Books stores out across the country and has opened Amazon Go cashierless grocery stores in Seattle, Chicago and San Francisco.

Construction workers mix with the noon lunch-hour crowd outside an Amazon Go store in downtown Seattle.
Construction workers mix with the noon lunch-hour crowd outside an Amazon Go store in downtown Seattle.Read moreAP Photo/Ted S. Warren

Amazon.com Inc. is scouting locations for physical stores in Philadelphia and will probably open one in the city within the next two years, according to the developer leading the transformation of Center City's Gallery at Market East shopping mall into a new retail complex.

The Seattle-based e-commerce giant has been rolling out Amazon Books stores across the country and has opened Amazon Go cashierless grocery stores in Seattle, Chicago and San Francisco.

Amazon is eyeing locations in Philadelphia for both types of shops, Joseph Coradino, chief executive of Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust, said Thursday at a commercial real estate forum hosted by the Urban Land Institute think tank.

Under consideration are sites on city retail streets and in shopping malls, he said. He declined to say whether Amazon is vetting a location in PREIT's Fashion District Philadelphia, as the revamped Gallery is to be known when it reopens in September 2019.

An Amazon spokeswoman declined to comment when asked for further details about the company's Philadelphia retail-space plans.