Budget Cuts Freeze Building of 18 New County Post Offices

The construction of 18 new post offices in San Diego County over the next five years, considered necessary by U.S. Postal Service officials in order to cope with the region’s extraordinary growth, has been pushed back at least 21 months because of federal deficit-cutting legislation enacted by Congress last week.

The mandated belt tightening within the Postal Service puts on hold plans to build first-time post offices in communities not now served by their own facilities: La Costa, Rancho Penasquitos, Tierrasanta, University City, Torrey Pines, North City West, Rancho San Diego in East County and EastLake in the South Bay.

In addition, plans to build new post offices to replace outgrown facilities are delayed by at least 21 months in Escondido, Encinitas, Rancho Santa Fe, Fallbrook, Ramona, and the San Diego neighborhoods of Linda Vista, Grantville, North Park and Normal Heights.

And plans have also been pushed back nearly two years to further modernize and expand the San Diego General Mail Facility (adjacent to the city’s main post office on Midway Drive) from 352,000 square feet to 800,000 square feet. It is through that facility that all mail leaving and entering San Diego County is processed.

Local postal officials say the construction delays--in many cases, land had been purchased and architectural drawings were being prepared--will put a further strain on already cramped facilities.

“With everything being pushed back 21 months, we’re really going to be hurt--especially because some of these areas are growing by leaps and bounds,” said Mike Cannone, communications manager for the San Diego Division of the U.S. Postal Service.

Unaffected by the new budget constraints is the construction, already under way, of new post offices in Santee and Julian, Cannone said.

The reason for the construction freeze was the adoption of a federal budget bill on Dec. 22 in which Congress required the Postal Service to repay the federal government $1.25 billion within the next two fiscal years as repayment for benefits paid by the federal government to postal retirees before the postal reorganization in 1970.

Congress required that the Postal Service repay the money out of its operating and capital improvements budgets rather than through rate increases or new indebtedness.

About half of the several hundred construction projects planned nationwide over the next two years have been canceled, including 75% of those that would have begun in 1988, the Postal Service said in Washington.

Cannone said local officials held some hope that several of the San Diego area projects might ultimately be spared from the construction freeze because of the area’s growth and demonstrated need for new facilities.

As a further cost-cutting effort, all but five post offices in San Diego will be closed this Saturday. The only facilities offering full retail services will be the main offices in San Diego, Chula Vista, El Cajon, Escondido and Oceanside. Saturday mail delivery will not be affected.

The construction moratorium may force Postal Service officials to rethink the design of some planned facilities, in that the challenge of finding parcels of five acres or larger in central locations will become that much more difficult if those site searches are delayed for nearly two years and current potential sites are purchased in the meantime for other development.

One option, Cannone said, is for multistory post offices to accommodate small parcels.

Another option, he said, is to separate postal functions in a given community or city, with customer-oriented retail functions operating out of a smaller, centrally located facility, and with bulk mail processing and mail carrier operations handled out of a different facility where convenience of location is not a criterion.

Typical of the post offices caught in a squeeze is the 18-year-old main post office on Orange Avenue in Escondido, where the building lease is scheduled to expire this summer.

The Postal Service had narrowed its search to two potential sites--neither one in the downtown area as is the current facility--because there are no empty downtown parcels large enough to accommodate a new post office.

‘It’s Frustrating’

The existing facility is so cramped now that incoming mail bins are stored on the outside loading dock until they are processed; at night, they are stuffed inside the building, clogging the work areas, said Assistant Postmaster Mike Engels. Some equipment is stored in the parking lot, and both the employee and customer parking lots are filled, forcing overflow parking onto neighboring streets.

“It’s frustrating, to say the least. I was looking forward to having a new building, more than twice as big as this one, so we could have more counter (service) windows and a whole new work environment,” Engels said.

“Our lease here expires in June, and I don’t know where we’re going to end up if we can’t renegotiate this lease,” he said.

Cannone said that given the growing space demands of the Escondido Post Office, it might have to relocate entirely to another temporary facility until a new facility is built.

The projects now frozen include:

FALLBROOK (92028): Construction bids were going to be solicited in the spring for a new post office at the southwest corner of Mission Road and Fallbrook Street, to replace the existing post office. “Nothing will happen now,” Cannone said.

LA COSTA (92009): A new branch of the Carlsbad Post Office was planned for construction along El Camino Real to serve La Costa. Initial architectural designs were under review.

ENCINITAS (92024): A new, 22,000-square-foot post office was planned for a 6.2-acre parcel of land near El Camino Real, to replace the existing post office on Second Street--built years ago when Encinitas’ population was generally situated west of Interstate 5. The Postal Service was negotiating for new site.

RANCHO SANTA FE (92067): Possible sites were being studied by the Postal Service for an expanded post office--one which, when built, would have provided mail delivery for the first time to the area. Currently, Rancho Santa Fe residents pick up their mail at post office boxes--a time-honored tradition that will continue for at least two more years despite a vote earlier this year that requested home delivery by a 3 to 1 margin.

ESCONDIDO (92025): The Postal Service was considering two possible sites, generally on the fringe of the city’s industrial area near Interstate 15, to replace the existing, main Post Office, and engineering studies were under way.

RAMONA (92065): A site along Main Street had been purchased and was in escrow, and officials were about ready to design the building, which would be about three times larger than the existing post office.

RANCHO PENASQUITOS (92127): A site at Twin Trails Road and Black Mountain Road had been selected and the purchase was in escrow, to give the community its first full-service post office. Currently a contract post office is provided at a convenience store, and residents go to Rancho Bernardo for full service.

HIGHLANDS (92130), TORREY PINES (92037) and UNIVERSITY CITY (92122): Entirely new post offices to bring full service for the first time to each of these three North City areas were planned, but no specific sites had been identified. The areas are now served out of La Jolla or a carrier annex in Sorrento Valley.

LINDA VISTA (92111): A construction bid was going to be sought in April to build a new post office at Comstock Street and Linda Vista Road, across from the existing, overcrowded post office, tripling its size. The land purchase was in escrow, and the Postal Service expects to complete the purchase.

NORTH PARK (92104) and JOHN ADAMS-NORMAL HEIGHTS (92116): Both existing facilities are overcrowded and parking is sparse, and plans were being considered to consolidate the mail carrier service from each office into an entirely new one, but maintaining customer-retail service at the existing post offices.

GRANTVILLE (92120): The Postal Service already purchased land on Mission Gorge Place and was meeting with architects to build a new post office to replace the existing post office off Mission Gorge Road.

TIERRASANTA (92124): The area currently is served by a contract station, and plans were under way to build the community’s first full-service post office. Negotiations were under way with the San Diego Unified School District for a possible purchase of a site.

RANCHO SAN DIEGO (92019): A new branch to the El Cajon post office was planned to serve the new development of Rancho San Diego, but no land had yet been identified as a site.

EASTLAKE (92013): A new branch to the Chula Vista post office was planned for a commercial park in this new South Bay development, near Otay Lakes Road, but no land purchase agreement had been negotiated.