Feb. 13, 2007 — The U.S. Postal Service hopes by early March to sign a lease with Boyson Inc. for use of its yet-to-be-constructed building in Cruz Bay, a mainland Postal Service official said Tuesday.
Speaking from his Hoboken, N.J., office, real estate manager Tom Pino said the plans for the building are in the final stages. "We're on track," he said.
Pino announced at a public meeting on Jan. 12 that the Postal Service had given up on the local government's proposal to locate the post office at a proposed vendor's plaza because the local government hadn't responded after its initial offer.
The whole vendor's plaza plan appears to be scrapped since Gov. John deJongh announced in his State of the Territory address that he would work to terminate the construction contract for the "ill-conceived and undersized parking project" that also included the vendor's plaza.
Pino said at the January meeting 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 customer spaces 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.
The new facility will be located near the public tennis courts, where a car wash now sits.
Pino said the new post office will have about three times the space as the cramped facility it now occupies in Cruz Bay .
Postmistress Tiffany Richardson said Tuesday that she's looking forward to the new facility. "I can't wait," she said, standing outside the package trailer surrounded by boxes.
In other news, she said that post office crews recently completed replacing some of the island's roadside neighborhood mailboxes that allow people to receive their mail close to their homes. The boxes serve many people from one location.
"We updated the ones in really bad condition," she said.
She said she did not know how many boxes were replaced, adding that the new boxes have concrete pillars in front to prevent people from running into them. "Unfortunately, accidents do happen," she said.
According to Richardson, space constraints at the post office prevented them from getting the number of boxes needed to make replacements at more locations. However, Richardson said that more boxes will be replaced in the coming months.
Jean Rayne, who lives in Calabash Boom, said that several weeks ago, for some mysterious reason, she wasn't getting mail delivered to her roadside mailbox. However, she said Tuesday that as mysteriously as it stopped, it also started again within the last couple of weeks.
"I'm delighted to be getting my New Yorker magazines again," Rayne said Tuesday.
Richardson said she had no information about that problem.
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