May 1, 2008 5:15 PM

Popular Cherry Creek North Post Office closing

Contact: Al DeSarro, 303-313-5182/cell 303-324-5517,

The U.S. Postal Service must vacate its popular Denver Cherry Creek Post Office at 245 Columbine St. in Cherry Creek North, when its lease expires on Sept. 30.
The Postal Service has occupied the building since Oct. of 1963.
The current landlord, James Heimbecher, who represents The Cherry Creek Co., has apparently sold or is in the process of selling the property and building. It is the Postal Service's understanding that the new, unidentified property owner intends to completely demolish the building and to use the property for other purposes.
Developer Jim Sullivan, who has long wanted to re-develop that site, couldn't be reached on Thursday. It is not known if he, or someone else, is planning the redevelopment.
"This came as a total surprise to us," says Denver Postmaster Alan Catlin, who is in charge of the Denver Post Office and its 28 metro postal stations including Cherry Creek. "That is a very popular postal retail location. We did not wish for this to happen. We had planned on continuing to renew our lease."
The Cherry Creek Postal Station serves as a postal retail outlet, offering Post Office Box rentals and regular customer retail mailing services like the selling of stamps and postal products, offering domestic and international shipping, package pickup, etc. Street mail delivery for ZIP Code 80206 Cherry Creek customers is handled from the Denver Glendale Station Post Office, which will continue those operations.
Plans now call for the Postal Service to vacate the Cherry Creek Station around the Sept. 30.
USPS is now pro-actively pursuing plans to try to establish a new contract postal station in Cherry Creek. USPS would like to contract out the handling of postal retail services to another Cherry Creek retail outlet.
This will be a challenge given the already high retail occupancy and rental rates of that area, and the requirements needed to have a postal contract station.
Those requirements include having a good location with accessible nearby parking, having sufficient space, having adequate security, the retail contractor having sufficient staffing and the ability to offer certain mailing services and customer hours.
It is also important that any contract arrangement or lease terms would have to be financially feasible for USPS and the contractor, while also providing Cherry Creek customers with quality retail mailing services.
USPS is actively encouraging any offers from the Cherry Creek community, especially retail businesses, who may wish to be considered for this postal contract station. Interested persons should contact Ruben Rojo, Retail Manager for the USPS, at 303-853-6722 or cell 720-320-9561.
If this contract postal unit is finalized, it would generally provide most retail postal services now offered at the Cherry Creek Station except for Post Office Box service and over the counter handling of noticed customer packages and accountable mail.
These customer services will be transferred to the Denver Glendale Post Office Station at 945 S. Birch St.,about 2.25 miles or a six-minutes minute drive away.
Letters to Cherry Creek ZIP Code 80206 customers will be sent out as soon as USPS has more details worked out on what eventually will happen.
"We regret these unfortunate circumstances but we appreciate the continued great support of our Cherry Creek customers," Catlin said.

Posted by John Rebchook at 5:15 PM | Comments (1)