Postal Center to Be Built in South County : Mail: A 200,000-square-foot facility is to be constructed at an undetermined site within four years to speed the delivery of letters mailed there.

U.S. Postal Service officials said Wednesday that they will build a $30-million distribution center in South Orange County to make sure that letters mailed here will be delivered promptly throughout the country.

Hector Godinez, the postal service’s regional postmaster, said a 200,000-square-foot center will be built within four years at a site not yet determined.

“We are going toe-to-toe trying to find a place,” he said.

Godinez said the Postal Service wants to build in an area bordered by El Toro Road to the north, the proposed Foothill Transportation Corridor to the east, Crown Valley Parkway to the south and the proposed San Joaquin Transportation Corridor to the west.

He said the new center will speed the delivery of letters mailed in the South County because they will no longer have to be trucked to the Santa Ana distribution center for sorting.

“Most of our trucks get on the freeway about 5 or 6 in the afternoon, and if the freeways are congested, it can be tough to get the letters sorted and onto planes that are leaving at 9 p.m.,” he said. “So instead of taking two days for a letter to get to the Midwest (or East Coast), it takes three.”

The new center will also assure that local letters will be delivered the next business day because they won’t have to leave the area, Godinez said.

Godinez said that about 6 million letters a day are sorted at the Santa Ana center. He said 2 million of those will be sorted at the new facility.

No jobs will be created by the new center. The center’s 2,000 employees will be taken from the 5,000 who now work in Santa Ana, many of whom already live in South County, Godinez said.