Fife Council will start moving to Amazon’s Glenrothes centre this autumn.
The online retail giant is to move from Bankhead to a new warehouse being built in Dunfermline, before the end of the year.
Having bought the premises in June last year, the council is centralising departments including roads maintenance and cleansing at Bankhead so it can close local depots to save money.
Among the operations to close are building services at Hayfield in Kirkcaldy, roads services in Thornton and cleansing at Smeaton.
However, Bankhead has limitations and may not be able to store the mound of salt required to keep Fife moving throughout the winter. A site to the south “several minutes’ walk away” is being considered for the salt mound and vehicle parking.
The move will cost £18.3 million but is expected to make savings in the long term. Of the total, £10.3 million has received capital funding and the rest will have to be borrowed.
Refitting office space at Bankhead is expected to be complete in August, with the first staff moving in shortly afterwards. Amazon is occupying only part of the building and for a short period the company and the council will be using the site simultaneously.
Councillors on the policy, finance and asset management committee will be updated on the move on Thursday.
The committee report stated, “The property is tenanted by Amazon and the programme must operate around their continuing occupation.
“One of the benefits in the council proceeding to purchase this property when it did was to provide focus to Amazon’s relocation plans.
“Concurrently to the council taking the initiative in providing modern fit-for-purpose services, Amazon have done likewise.
“They plan to vacate Bankhead in January 2012 moving into their new, larger premises at Dunfermline, construction of which proceeds apace.
“By necessity therefore the construction side of this programme is in two halves the first dealing with the part not tenanted by Amazon to be ready for use in August 2011, and the rest being the remaining offices and warehousing space to be ready in February 2013.
“The space and process conflicts to manage for the externals are car parking, storage, including salt storage, waste recycling, fuelling and washing.
“The current iteration entails development of a site to the south several minutes walk away in council ownership. This option is being considered due to cost stresses arising from additional external space requirements for certain operations, primarily parking and the salt dome.”
Around 100 people are employed by Amazon at the Bankhead centre, which was formerly occupied by ADC Telecommunications.
The staff are being transferred to Dunfermline’s eastern expansion, where Amazon is creating 763 jobs at its new building.