Politics & Government
Pratt Station Post Office To Reopen
Starting next month, locals won't have to wait at a postal truck to send or pick up packages.
The is reopening as early as next month according to Congressman Ed Towns, ending a year of mail mayhem in Fort Greene and Clinton Hill.
The announcement will come as a relief to the thousands of Fort Greene and Clinton Hill residents who have been forced to wait in the outdoors at a single-teller postal truck parked in front of the permanent office on Myrtle Avenue between Grand Avenue and Steuben Street since last February.
On Wednesday many customers were ready to go postal after a year of lining up outside of the makeshift office, rain or shine.
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“We pay too much in taxes for this,” said Alma Reid. “It’s not something we should have to be dealing with in this day and age.”
The permanent office closed to fix a laundry list of issues last March, including sagging floorboards, problems with the ceiling, and damaged service counters. Officials originally said it would be closed for just two months.
Find out what's happening in Fort Greene-Clinton Hillwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Community Board 2 Chairman John Dew said that a dispute over who should pay for the repairs — the landlord of the building or the U.S. Postal Service — prolonged the process.
Once the delay became apparent another temporary office opened in an empty storefront on Myrtle Avenue to receive larger packages, but some customers said it hasn’t been much help.
“At rush hour this space is a mess,” Ian Sinkovic said. “You can’t get near it. It’s so disorganized, and they’ve lost packages.”
The whole ordeal reached a new level of inconvenience last month, when the postal truck remained closed for a week following the , leaving customers without a local office at all.
“When I was a kid, I remember hearing 'neither snow, nor rain, nor heat,’” said Dew at this month’s meeting of Community Board 2. “But apparently that wasn't the case during the storm!"
Congressman Towns met Dew and others from Community Board 2 at the post office this week to check on the site, according to a representative from his office. He added that Towns would closely monitor the post office’s performance once it reopens.
A call to a spokeswoman for the U.S. Postal Service was not returned.
