Westport Post Office Sale Moving Forward

Signs advertising the sale of the Westport Post Office building should be up at 154 Post Road East in a couple of days, according to a spokesman for the United States Postal Service. 

"Very shortly we'll be seeing a brokerage sign outside the Westport office," Maureen Marion, a USPS spokeswoman, said Friday afternoon. 

The one-story building, built in 1935 and owned by the U.S. Post Office in Hadley, Mass., was most recently appraised at $3.6 million, according to Westport tax records. 

USPS and town officials have said the 4,960-square-foot building that houses the Westport Post Office is being sold because the USPS is having financial problems, customers have trouble finding parking spaces by the building and the building is larger than Westport postal workers need now that mail is sorted in Norwalk. 

Marion said the USPS would place advertisements in local newspapers to solicit space for the Westport Post Office in the coming weeks. She said the downtown building would not be sold unless a new home for the Westport Post Office is found.

"If any piece of that puzzle does not go together, all bets are off," she said. Marion, though, could not guarantee that the post office's new home would be downtown. 

"The advertising, we believe, is crucial to getting word out that we're looking for space," she said. "Right at this stage, we need to see which parcels will be brought to our attention."

COMMUNITY REACTION

Customers in Westport's main post office on Thursday said they were saddened the building would be sold and that they hoped the new office remains downtown. 

"It should be in town where things like that are - Town Hall, the post office, library - so it's central to everybody, not just convenient for some and inconvenient for others," said Elizabeth Gerteiny, a 40-year resident of Westport. 

Jennifer Mattly, 41, a Westport resident for 18 years, said the Westport Post Office was near her home and centrally located for town residents.

"If I don't go here, it's Greens Farms or Norwalk, and that's just not helpful," she said. "Unless they plan to (re-open) somewhere in this downtown area, I'm totally opposed...Let's close one more thing in downtown Westport that's been here for years. We've already sold out to the chains." 

Nicole Bonn, 39, a Westport resident for nine years, said the Westport Post Office was the pulse of the community and belonged downtown, adding that the location was convenient for residents as well. "I have a million errands right here," she said. 

Jill Nicolia, 38, a Trumbull resident who works in Westport, echoed Bonn's concerns.

"I think it should remain downtown for convenience. Everything's down here. People run a lot of errands, and they have to drive through town anyway," Nicolia said. 

Having a post office downtown also benefits downtown merchants, said Bob LeRose, owner of Bobby Q's, a restaurant on Main Street, and president of the Downtown Merchants Association. 

"I think the common thought process is where post offices have moved out of downtowns, it's had an impact on downtown traffic," LeRose said. "Obviously, when you lose a business that brings people to an area consistently, it's never a good thing." 

"It's an activity that forces people to come to our part of the town, and, to lose that, they're going to go somewhere else," LeRose said. 

Dick Lowenstein, a member of Westport's Representative Town Meeting, also was worried about the effect of losing a downtown post office.

"The foot traffic will start to dry up even more if there is no post office there," he said. "I think it's important to stay between the river and Myrtle Avenue because that's where the traffic is." 

Lowenstein said the 154 Post Road East building, built during the Great Depression as part of a public works' project, was architecturally significant and that he'd like to see the building preserved by whoever buys it. 

Marion said the USPS hopes to receive a lot of potential new locations through its advertisements. Postal officials will present the options for a new home to the community in late winter or early spring, Marion added. 

WHAT OF THE SAUGATUCK BRANCH?

Meanwhile, plans to find a new home for the Saugatuck Post Office, which moved out of a leased building on Riverside Avenue last fall, remain unsettled.

Post office boxes for the Saugatuck Post Office are now in a trailer at the 20 Saugatuck Ave. shopping center. Window service is available in Fast Stop Convenience Store, a business there. 

About 8,570 square feet of space is available in that shopping center, but Marion said the USPS has not decided where to re-open the Saugatuck branch.

She said postal officials are still reviewing surveys returned by about half of the 670 people who rent post office boxes in the trailer. 

"That particular trailer that is in place is not the permanent solution," Marion said. "That is temporary. Everyone's definition of short-term may be different, but that is a short-term facility."

Westport First Selectman Gordon Joseloff said he wasn't happy about what happened to the Saugatuck Post Office last fall and that it was "very important and imperative to have a post office in the downtown Westport area." 

Joseloff said a new tenant in the Westport Post Office's building may draw people downtown as well.

"As trite as it sounds, it's one door closing and another door opening," he said. 

The other post office in Westport, which is on the New York City-bound side of the Greens Farms Railroad Station, has about 1,000 post office boxes and window service.