Post Office Delivers Bad News: No Move for Mall

It seems that neither snow nor rain--nor mall expansion plans--will oust the local branch of the U.S. Postal Service from its appointed site.

“It’s not that we want to stand in the way of progress,” Postal Service spokesman Joseph Breckenridge said. “It’s just that we do not have the dough to relocate. Our rent is very attractive right now.”

The post office in question, located at 396 S. California Ave., stands in the way of plans to expand the Fashion Plaza shopping complex. So on Monday, the City Council, acting in its capacity as city Redevelopment Agency, voted to build around it.

Councilman William Tarozzi cast the only dissenting vote.

“It’ll be a sore spot,” he complained. “We should try to relocate the post office immediately.”

Despite a year of negotiations between the Redevelopment Agency and the Postal Service, the post office isn’t budging. The city is powerless to evict the post office using its eminent domain authority because the facility is a federal entity.

“It throws a wrinkle into the process,” City Administrative Analyst Dan Holler said.

The expansion, approved last June, will add 100,000 square feet of store space as well as a May Co. department store as a fourth anchor to the mall.

Despite the post office’s refusal to move, the Redevelopment Agency will buy the land it sits on as part of the 16 to 18 acres it is assembling for the expansion, Redevelopment Manager Chet Yoshizaki said.

As things stand, the post office will stay on the site until its lease runs out.

Breckenridge said the post office recently renewed its five-year lease and has an option to extend it to the year 2000. He said the government is getting a good deal on the rent: $30,000 a year for a 23,000-square-foot facility.

Because the post office is staying put, the Redevelopment Agency voted Monday to offer the project’s developers--Sylvan Shulman Co. and May Centers Inc.--a vacant, city-owned parcel of land to compensate. The property, which once was an Alpha-Beta store, has 20,000 square feet of buildable space.

The post office problem will also force redevelopment officials to alter proposed traffic patterns and reduce a planned retail development along Vincent Avenue by 15,000 square feet.

Yoshizaki said negotiations with the post office will continue. “We’re hoping we can still move the post office before their lease terminates,” he said.

The post office, which serves about 23,300 homes and businesses, has been located in the single-story building since 1958.

“Relocating us is going to cost somebody a lot of money,” Breckenridge said. “And the post office is not going to pick up the tab.”