Let’s have a community conversation about the need for a new post office

Estes Park, 1962. The population of the Estes Valley was about 2,300 and that year, 1.7 million people visited Rocky Mountain National Park. Currently more than 12,000 people live in the Estes Valley and 4.2 million people visited Rocky Mountain National Park last year.

Prior to the Urban Renewal improvements after the Lawn Lake Flood, downtown was very different place. There were several gas stations downtown, and there were no trees, no benches, and no flower beds. The street was all angled parking in front of the stores and the sidewalks were narrow. There was no Safeway. A very small quaint food market, Brodies, was the only place to buy groceries.  The high school was located in the building that is now Town Hall.

Estes was truly a seasonal destination. After Labor Day, many of the businesses downtown shut down for the winter. I remember walking downtown in the winter and the windows of many businesses were lined with old newspapers to stop the fading effect of the harsh winter sun. Most of the lodging properties, including the Stanley Hotel, were shuttered until late spring.

On May 13 of that year, we dedicated our “new” post office, in the location it sits today. Local and state dignitaries attended this auspicious event. The junior high band played and the president of the student council, William Van Horn—yes, the same William Van Horn—recited “An Ode to the Flag.” The post office building was 6,349 square feet and owned by the JT Clough family of Greeley. It was a great location choice in 1962.

Our community has changed and grown considerably in the last sixty-two years, yet we are still being served by the same 6,349 square feet post office. We long ago outgrew this facility and it is time for a dialogue about the need for a new post office for our community.

The current downtown location is awkward and inconvenient at best for most Estes Park residents. This was painfully evident during the Downtown Estes Loop construction, but this location was a problem long before construction, and it will continue to be a problem.

The current post office has only a couple parking spaces on site. Staff, postal trucks, and customers compete daily for parking spaces with downtown visitors. Signage with short-term limits and cones reserving spaces for mail delivery vehicles are only band-aids to a problem that will just keep getting worse. And parking is just part of the problem,

This undersized facility is inadequate to serve the needs of the current population. The average size of post offices in the U.S. today is over 13,000 square feet—more than twice the size of our aging facility.

In 1962 there was no Amazon and no Wayfair. The number of parcels the United States Postal Service (USPS) handles has exploded exponentially with the advent of online shopping.

Our existing post office facility is woefully inadequate to allow our dedicated postal employees to efficiently handle all these parcels. They do a fantastic job making the best of what they have, however frustrating it must be for them.

When my kids outgrew their shoes, I did not get angry at the kids or criticize them for problems they had hiking or playing sports wearing ill-fitting footwear. The same rings true for our postal workers, they are making do, but this too will just keep become more and more difficult for them.

From a downtown perspective, the location of the current post office has great potential for redevelopment. This is a rare, choice piece of property in our downtown core. With the completion of the Loop, the high visibility and downtown proximity of this property lends itself to some great potential new and exciting opportunities for our downtown business district.

Many communities have faced and addressed this same issue. Fort Collins and Loveland have both moved their main post office out of the downtown core to the periphery of town, with more parking, easier access for customers, and adequate space for postal operations.

Exactly where a better location would be is a subject for community discussion, but I think that just about anywhere in town out of the crowded downtown core, would be an improvement for a vast majority of Estes Park residents.

So why hasn’t this happened already? The USPS has a very attractive lease with the owner of the building and there would be a cost to moving to a new facility. Although the current building and site pose significant operational challenges for our local staff and is problematic for its customers, the officials at the USPS have little incentive to consider a change, especially if the community has not expressed any dissatisfaction with the current facility.

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”  Well, it may not be “broke,” but it is certainly worn out and obsolete. Our community and our postal workers deserve better.

I believe it is time for a community dialogue on this issue. If the majority of the community is happy with the status quo, then that would be the end of the discussion.

If, on the other hand, the community agrees it is time to consider a new post office, then we need to pull together in a coordinated effort with residents, businesses, the Town, and our elected officials to communicate to the decision makers in the USPS that Estes Park is beyond overdue for a new more efficient post office in a more optimal location and to ask them to begin the process for relocating our post office.