The planned closure of Silver Spring's "Finance Branch" post office, located at 8455 Colesville Road (next door to the McDonalds), has been put on hold until 2013. This word came from one of the clerks whom I recently asked while mailing some packages.
The United States Postal Service had planned to close or consolidate 677 post offices nationwide. Of the 13 locations chosen in the "Capital District," nine were in the District of Columbia proper and one each was in Hyattsville, Rockville, Bethesda, and Silver Spring.
The Bethesda location was quickly removed from the list (no surprise there), but I was sure the Finance Branch...home to the Silver Spring Historical Society's PO Box 1160 since 1999 (when we were forced to vacate the historic 1950 Blair Station post office at 8045 Newell Street in south Silver Spring when that location closed)...would get the axe.
Blair Station post office, 8045 Newell Street. Photographed 2003 by Jerry A. McCoy.
With the "main" post office just around the corner at 8616 2nd Avenue, the idea a A. having to trudge up the hill and B. having to wait in that location's perpetually long lines ...staffed by surly clerks...did not appeal to me at all (the clerks on Colesville have always been wonderful!). The decision to save the $132 per year that our small PO box costs and just have the mail delivered to my house was going to be an easy one.
Hopefully by time 2013 rolls around the Paul S. Sarbanes Transit Center, being built diagonally across the street, will be completed. With its planned offices and hotel and tens of thousands of people that will pass through its portals each day, a post office branch located inside this major transportation hub seems like a no-brainer.
I am SO pleased to hear this!! Those ladies at the "business" Post Office are fantastic and I too was anxious about the hill walk with my packages only to be met with the lines and growls.