The Broadway Station outlet of the US Postal Service will be busier — and Central District residents and business owners will be visiting Broadway more often — with more in what seems like a never ending line of changes on the local front of the nation’s mail delivery service.
Last week, USPS announced a plan to move the Central District’s retail location at 23rd and Union to “a smaller, more cost-effective location” in a session with the City Council’s Economic Resiliency and Regional Relations Committee. While officials say the new retail location hasn’t yet been selected, the PO boxes from 23rd/Union are destined for a new home on Capitol Hill with customers being transitioned to the Broadway at Denny post office.
While not exactly the clearest of messages, the move is another indication that the national mail service is planning for its Broadway location to continue being part of its newly streamlined offerings as it continues to face budget pressures and service cuts to its offerings. CHS reported in January that Broadway-based mail carriers — and their vehicles — would be moved to a new “consolidated” facility at 4th and Lander.
The Broadway post office has a lease for its Capitol Hill home through at least 2015. Its building’s new landlords told CHS last year that they intended to work with USPS to keep the facility for as long as the feds were willing to pay for it.
Where are the people coming from the CD supposed to park? More cars in the sidewalk I suppose.
I feel for the folks who depend on the CD office. I too use that facility and don’t see them taking there packages via mass transit to Broadway/Denny or down to SODO. As noted above, there is little parking around the Broadway office. Those who need to retrieve mail from a vacation hold will be forced to commute to SODO.
With this closure, I’ll stop using USPS for shipping packages and will opt for something more accessible.
They have to know they’ll lose many of the box holders from the CD. They must not care–as I recall there is a waitlist to get a PO box in the Broadway location anyway. This will just push more people to 3rd party mail solutions. Someone should open a private mail provider in the Jackson & 23rd shopping center.
The Broadway post office is the worst of all of them. Always understaffed. This is absurd.
My first thought was “where are they planning to put all the additional boxes?”
But then, I remembered that they have moved out a lot of the sorting and other mail processing that used to happen behind the scenes there. The back room is pretty empty now, so there should be a lot of space available for them to expand the box lobby.
This is a good sign for those of us that use the Broadway PO, it seems that they mean to keep it open for the foreseeable future.
[…] was confident the shop would be open at least through the holidays, the busiest time for USPS. With the 23rd and Union post office shuttering, Angel said the neighborhood desperately needs a place like Postal […]