click to enlarge - Kevin McCallum ©️ Seven Days
- The federal building in downtown Montpelier
Montpelier is a step closer to opening a new downtown post office after 265 days without one.
The U.S. Postal Service recently informed local officials that it had signed a lease for a Main Street location for post office boxes and retail postal services. It could open by this summer.
Details of the lease were not immediately available. An official from the U.S. Postal Service confirmed the lease has been signed and said there would be plenty of work to do before the building can open.
Ben Doyle, chair of the Montpelier Commission for Recovery & Resilience, hailed the decision on Monday.
“
I think it’s a really important step for Montpelier’s recovery, and I think it will be a real shot in the arm for the community to feel like we’re headed in the right direction," Doyle told Seven Days on Monday.
The Capital City has been without a downtown post office since the July 9, 2023, flood inundated the federal building at 87 State Street, which remains closed and shows few signs of renovation.
The closure severely disrupted mail service in the city, leading to delivery delays and forcing post office box customers to drive to several different locations to pick up their mail.
At one point, the postal service set up a mobile post office in a parking lot two miles from downtown, but that shut amid concerns about poor working conditions for workers as winter approached. Customers were later forced to use the post office in Barre.
click to enlarge - Submitted
- City Center mall in Montpelier
The new location will be the City Center mall, an 1980s-era building at 89 Main Street that houses the Skinny Pancake restaurant, an AT&T store and Artisans Hand craft gallery. Onion River Outdoors relocated there after the flood
from its longtime location on Langdon Street.
“While an opening date is not yet established, USPS’s goal is to open the facility before the summer months,” Doyle wrote in a press release.
click to enlarge - Kevin Mccallum ©️ Seven Days
- The empty federal building that housed the post office in downtown Montpelier
He said the commission, Vermont’s congressional delegation, various state and local leaders, and residents put pressure on the postal service to act. And, he said, it worked.
"All are to be thanked and applauded for standing up for Montpelier," Doyle wrote.
Despite the decision, Doyle said he remains deeply disappointed in postal service leadership for failing to communicate and follow rules requiring the agency to engage with the local community on the search for a new site.
"It's mind-boggling," he said. "For them to not have a presence in downtown Montpelier just demonstrates a lack of interest in our community and, I think, rural America."