“Please don’t let them close this post office!” Lottie Poindexter pleaded.
She was picking up her mail, on Washington Avenue near Columbus in the Hill. Just as she does every other day. She comes over from work at Yale-New Haven Hospital, where she has worked for 32 years. She doesn’t see why things have to change.
The U.S. Postal Service has other ideas.
It aims to cut a $6 billion deficit by Sept. 30, the end of its fiscal year. So it’s considering closing small neighborhood post offices — including two beloved branches in New Haven, the Kilby Branch that Lottie Poindexter calls home, and the historic Westville branch on Fountain Street, built in the Depression under the Works Progress Administration. (One of those WPA murals remains on the wall in the main public area.)
The list of possible station closings, released Wednesday, is not set in stone, according to Maureen Marion, the postal service’s Northeast regional spokeswoman.
She said this is a preliminary list of possible stations to close. In coming weeks the postal service will study the sites further in order to make a final decision. It has no set deadline; Marion called Oct. 1 “a good kind of finger-in-the-wind date.”
She didn’t have details on why these two specific New Haven branches were identified. Asked where readers could give input on the decision, she said to wait a week or so. At that point the postal service will distribute surveys to customers of the targeted branches, she said. There may or may not be community meetings.
One local politician, New Haven State Rep. Pat Dillon, said she’d like to see local elected officials fight the closing plan. She said it doesn’t make sense. Like the state’s plan to widen Whalley Avenue, this one “encourages automobile use,” she noted.
And the closings will further reduce the postal service’s business — when it needs to find ways to build is market instead, Dillon argued.
“Rather than close, why not have good bike racks and look at parking, and the design and overall street access to the building? Tie it in to other local uses. Why not look at multi use? Maybe put seating in there. It’s small and Americans aren’t very good at designing small spaces. But we should be. How about installing bigger P.O. boxes, or an internet cafe there, at least one public computer to retrieve email?”
U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro also raised concerns Thursday about the potential closings.
“E‑mail and online statements, as well as the economic recession, have compounded
the financial challenges facing the U.S. Postal Service,” she said in a statement issued by her office.
“[H]owever the direction they are moving in, including potential branch closures and consolidations, raises concerns, especially as there seem to be other alternatives available. While I have not yet reviewed the full details of their proposal, I look forward to doing so, as well as working with the members of the communities, mayors, town chairs and the Postal Service to determine the best course of action.”
A steady stream of customers at both branches reacted to the news Thursday with sentiments like Lottie Poindexter’s. They wondered if “someone” could intervene to preserve the tradition of the family-like, familiar urban neighborhood branch where people without cars can walk. Where staffers you know for decades help you out. Where you can keep a steady address if you move around, or a safe depository for your mail.
Seniors bemoaned the loss of a branch within walking distance. Herman Hyatt, a 79-year-old retired USRAC machinist, is one of them. He has been walking to pick up his mail at the Fountain Street branch for the past 15 years. He wouldn’t be able to walk to the next nearest branch, the Amity post office in a shopping plaza on Whalley Avenue.
Staffers at both post offices, too, said they hope the postal service changes its mind. They worry about what jobs they can move to. And they would miss the customers they have seen, in some cases, every day or week for decades. Al Brown has worked at Kilby Station, around the corner from the under-construction Clemente School, for 25 years. He has known some of the regulars since they were little kids. “They’re bringing in their own kids now.”
“We’re still like the old-time people. We go the extra mile,” said Brown’s colleague behind the counter, Cheryl Dickerson. She contrasted the small branches to the “impersonal” regional full-service offices like Brewery Street’s, where Kilby’s customers would largely go.
“I love the people here. They are friends, you know? I’ve been knowing them for years,” said Alva Henderson, who mails her letters in person at the Kilby branch. Her husband keeps a post office box at the branch, too, for his elderly mother.
John Ramey made his regular stop Thursday at Kilby to check the post office box of an elderly uncle whom he cares for.
Richard Lebov showed up with his usual stack of mail. He has been using the neighborhood station for 40 years, as it has moved through several spots. “I pick up my mail here twice a day” for his company, Supreme Storage Trailer Co., he said. “I send out a few thousand pieces of mail a month.” Levy runs the Boulevard Development Association, whose 22 businesses rely on the branch.
It seems that not a lot of thought has gone into the list closings; what, exactly, are the criteria?
Removing a post office like the Westville branch would destroy one of the stabler pillars upon which the Westville downtown can always count and which makes it a pleasant and interesting place within the city overall. Plus, its interior is one of a kind; the same cannot be said at the "seen one, you've seen 'em all" strip-mall branch farther up Whalley.