Politics & Government
Fate is Sealed: Small Downtown Postal Branch to Close Nov. 18
Locust Street office is frequented by workers from downtown businesses.
Nov. 18 is scheduled to be the last day for a small, nondescript post office on Locust Street downtown.
The customers include employees of many downtown businesses. They have been making their retail postal transactions and using more than 300 boxes at, and now will be redirected to the main Walnut Creek post office on North Broadway.
The local union of the American Postal Workers Union is opposed to the move.
"We are concerned that it creates a negative impression by the public about the postal service," said Steve Lysaght, president of the APWU's local union in the East Bay Area. "It's in our interest and the American public's interest to have a strong viable post office, not to shed off smaller, community-based sites."
Postal authorities announced the move this week. A community meeting held on the proposal April 18 drew about a half-dozen people, Lysaght said.
Sending more customers to the main office on North Broadway will aggravate parking and congestion problems there, Lysaght said. It will drive more customers to the post office's private competitors, he added.
Nationwide, the post office in recent months has been consolidating services and reducing overhead by .
The Locust Street office, across a driveway from a city parking garage, is classified as a finance station with no delivery originating from it, Lysaght said. Its employees will be reassigned to other postal facilities in Walnut Creek, he added.
The union has appealed to Walnut Creek and regional political leaders to lobby for the Locust Street office to remain open, Lysaght said.
The Locust Street facility, even without a prominent sign on the street telling the public there's a postal office inside, was a revenue generator — more than $500,000 in fiscal 2010, Lysaght said. There was an accident in which a car went through the Locust Street window seven years ago, and the main sign was never replaced, postal employees said.
The Locust Street office has a few reviews on yelp.com.
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