Monday, June 28, 1999
Mason to deliver with new post office
City feels space crunch of current digs
BY KEVIN ALDRIDGE
The Cincinnati Enquirer
MASON — There is one special delivery even the U.S. Postal Service can't get to Dan Hoyle fast enough.
A new post office.
For the past year, Mr. Hoyle, Mason's interim postmaster, has been trying to keep the city's 41-year-old post office from being swallowed up by rapid growth. A new $4.1 million post office on U.S. 42 and Snider Road is expected to be completed by the end of December, but for Mr. Hoyle it can't get there soon enough.
“Forty years ago when this post office was first built, the space was adequate,” he said of the 4,450-square-foot facility on Second Avenue. “But with the growth spurts we've experienced over the last two to three years, we've literally outgrown this post office.”
Mason's 11 city delivery routes, 12 rural routes and one highway contract route have made sorting the mail inside the post office challenging. Boxes, bins and route cases that hold sorted mail fill just about every inch of the employees' work area, hindering normal daily operations.
Last year, the post office leased two rooms from Peoples Building Loan and Savings Company next door to ease the tight conditions. The bank even knocked out a wall to provide more space for the post office's use. It wasn't enough.
“We recently had to bring in a trailer to house the sorting area for five of our rural routes because space is so limited,” Mr. Hoyle said.
U.S. Postal officials say Mason's post office isn't the only one without enough space.
“It's happening at post offices all across the country where growth is possible,” Bonni Manies, communications specialist for the Cincinnati postal district, said. “As more people and industries move to the outskirts of metropolitan areas, many of the small suburban post offices are being overwhelmed by increasing mail volume.”
Greg Frye, a spokesman for the USPS, said the postal service spent nearly $2 billion in 1998 to update and renovate facilities across the country.
“The U.S. Postal Service is building more now than it ever has before,” Mr. Frye said. “Updating our facilities has become one of our top priorities. There is an incredible dedication to keep our buildings and delivery services at a state-of-the-art level.”
Since 1996, the USPS has invested, on average, $3 billion a year on capital improvements such as new buildings, vehicles, machinery and technology. The USPS has budgeted about $4.4 billion in capital improvements for this year.
Mr. Frye said in 1998 the postal service footed the bill for 257 new building projects less than $10 million and 176 project more than $10 million. The postal services building binge is most apparent in Southern Ohio.
Mason, Warren County's largest city, began construction of a new $4.1 million facility on U.S. 42 and Snider Road in April. The new 20,000-square-foot building will quadruple the size of Mason's existing post office and will be the first new facility in the 26-county Cincinnati postal district next year.
The new facility will feature an expanded parking area, a full service counter, a postal retail shop and 24-hour access to the lobby.
Postal officials in Lebanon moved into a new $3.5 million facility last November that is nearly five times the size of its former building.
Symmes Township welcomed a new 16,864-square-foot post office this year. The $1.9 million project includes the postal service's newest “retail store” concept.
The village of Cleves in Hamilton County received funds last year from the postal service to build a new facility. The $1.6 million building is scheduled for completion this year and will be among the most modern the postal service has to offer.
Wilmington's new $3.2 million facility is under way and Milford officials await a new $4.3 million post office.
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