Amazon
Audio By Carbonatix
Less than one year after Richardson approved an Amazon Prime drone delivery center, city leaders are rethinking their votes.
The Amazon drone-delivery home base, located just south of the Methodist Richardson Medical Center, has fulfilled 13,000 online orders since opening. A majority of that traffic has been directed over one neighborhood due to a no-fly zone that covers the hospital, and the hundred-plus daily drone flights have begun to cause ire amongst neighbors.
Last December, the Observer reported on one Richardson resident’s frustrations, which had begun to mount after frequent drone deliveries over his home created nuisance noise. At the time, the neighbor speculated that because the program was relatively new, his neighbors had not yet begun to fuss about the “headache” caused by the incessant buzzing.
Three months later, the fuss has begun.
“I would challenge anyone who supported this measure to come spend an hour with me, just sitting in my backyard, trying to enjoy watching my children play in the pool. Bring a little note card with you, and every time you hear a drone, make a mark,” said Brian Rowe, homeowners association president of a neighborhood that has been affected by the drone traffic, during a March 9 city council meeting. “We need to balance the needs of our citizens over and against the needs of corporations like Amazon, and we have yet to meet that balance here.”
Among the concerns raised at the meeting, which a representative from Amazon attended, were the noise caused by the drones, the long hours during which the drones are permitted to operate, and privacy concerns about the potential surveillance. According to Sam Bailey, a manager with Amazon Prime Air’s economic development efforts, the first complaints about the drone deliveries were raised by the Wood Creek Church on Dec. 16. A month later, the company began hearing pushback from neighborhood stakeholders.
The drones operate only within a 7.5-mile radius, Bailey told the council, and flight paths are limited by the hospital’s no-fly zone mandated by the Federal Aviation Administration. The noise emitted by the drones is an issue that the company is “constantly looking at evolving,” he said, but introducing a new model of drone is unlikely due to the various approval processes that would have to take place.
“I think the feedback we’ve heard from the communities [means] we do have some more work to do,” Bailey said.
He added that the drones used to deliver Amazon Prime packages, known as MK30 drones, are not equipped with license plate or facial-recognition data-collection cameras commonly associated with first-responder drones. Individuals who would like their home blurred in the company’s image collection can request this from the company’s customer service department, he added.
“I will never say that nothing can be hacked,” said Bailey. “But we’ve taken every measure to ensure that our operations are contained, and are only operated safely by Amazon and approved drone monitors from the [fulfillment center].”
Bailey said the company has adopted several procedural changes since receiving community pushback, including raising the minimum altitude for drone flights and attempting to redraw flight paths so that drones en route to a delivery have time to reach a higher altitude before passing over residential areas.
Still, some Richardson officials appeared unconvinced by the representative’s promise to be a good neighbor. Council member Dan Barrios said he first witnessed the drones while greeting voters at the polls at the beginning of March. He described the machine as loud enough to force a pause in conversation, and stated that he “can’t imagine hearing that day after day,” as some residents are now forced to.
Other officials suggested they were rethinking their partnership with Amazon Prime. They warned that, if things did not improve, Richardson would serve as a warning to other cities looking to bring a drone fulfillment center to town.
“If the vote that we had last year were held today, there’s absolutely no way I’d say yes,” said Council member Joe Corcoran. “I know that hindsight’s 20/20, and I can’t go back in the past and change it, but it seems like lately I can’t go anywhere without someone complaining to me about this decision, and rightfully so.”
Corcoran added that the reality that has been established over the last few months isn’t what “anyone had in mind” when approving the service last summer.
The delivery drones are permitted to operate between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. and neighbors who live near the fulfillment site report hearing the machines multiple times an hour. While Bailey told the Richardson city council that the center is currently fulfilling only about 150 orders a day, an FAA approval assessment issued in August 2025 states that the agency would allow up to 1,000 deliveries a day from the center.
The threat that Richardson’s experience could warn other cities away from entering into agreements with the Amazon Prime drone delivery service is Richardson’s primary leverage. At the end of the March 9 briefing, they wielded it, requesting that Amazon conduct an updated noise survey and further enshrine privacy protections for neighbors whose homes are within the delivery zone. While City Manager Don Magner stated that he “has not heard anything from Amazon” other than a willingness to “refine, refine, refine,” the program, Mayor Amir Omar suggested that a few small acts of goodwill would go a long way in smoothing over relationships with the town.
“I really would love it if you considered whether or not shaving an hour off [of the start and end times of operation] would somehow be so crushing a blow to this program to where it doesn’t make sense,” Omar said. “It just sounds a bit insane that a drone is waking [residents] up, or at least flying overhead, at 7 a.m. I get that that’s what you got approved, but if that is something that you would be willing to do, I think it’s a great gesture of good faith.”
