Jan. 12, 2007 – U.S. Postal Service officials don't know what's happened to the local government's plan to build a vendor's plaza/parking garage across from the Creek in Cruz Bay, but they do know they aren't waiting around any longer for local officials to make their plans known.
At the request of the local government, the Postal Service had planned to move to the proposed vendor's plaza/parking garage, but Postal Service officials said they haven't heard from the government on the proposed project in six months.
"We need to move on," said Tom Pino, the Postal Service's real estate manager for the New York area and the Caribbean, during a Friday meeting at the Legislature that was attended by about a dozen people.
Instead, the Postal Service plans to lease space in a building to be built by Boyson Inc. on land Boyson owns. It's located across from the public tennis courts in Cruz Bay. A canvas-roofed car wash now sits at that site.
Boyson operates one of the barge services that run between Cruz Bay and Red Hook, St. Thomas .
Pino said the Postal Service will lease about 6,000 square feet of space from Boyson. The post office will be located on ground level with a mezzanine to hold the mechanical parts of the operation. A parking area with about 15 spaces for customers will be located on the second level. A possible third level will be occupied by Boyson operations.
Entry to the parking level will be on the side street.
Pino said the new post office will look like Postal Service facilities across the country. He said it will have about three times the space as the cramped facility it now occupies in Cruz Bay .
He said the Postal Service is now working out the leasing details with Boyson. While he declined to indicate the length of the lease, Pino said it would be long.
Dane Weir, the Postal Service's manager of design and construction, said the facility is planned to meet the needs of St. John for the next 10 years.
"We're considering the growth of the island," he said.
Boyson's Cheryl Boynes-Jackson said she expects construction to start before summer. She said it will take about 18 months to complete.
At a November 2005 meeting, Pino, Weir and other Postal Service officials said it planned to place its facility at a shopping center to be built at Guinea Grove near the Westin Resort and Villas. However, at that meeting, the local government's capital projects coordinator, Keith Richards, announced that the government wanted to expand the planned vendor's plaza/parking garage in Cruz Bay to include the postal facility. ? The Postal Service switched gears and unveiled the plans for a facility at the proposed vendor's plaza/parking garage at a meeting in June 2006.
Pino said that the Postal Service hasn't heard from the local government since shortly after that.
"We had zero communication in the last half a year," he said.
He said the new location is good for the community and good for the Postal Service.
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