A big change of address
Beloved post office in San Antonio suburb heads to new location after 50 years, bringing mixed feelings for its longtime customers
When a post office moves, does it have to send out a changeof-address card?
For the location at 4801 Broadway, a neighborhood bastion in Alamo Heights for five decades, the answer is yes — almost 28,000 of them.
That’s how many addresses in the 78209 ZIP code received post cards notifying residents that the mail emporium — a bit dowdy but still cherished — would be moving to 1107 Austin Highway, where a brand spanking new retail space, all white stone and clean lines, awaits.
The old location next to Central Market will close Saturday. The new location — 2.1 miles away, still within the city of Alamo Heights in greater San Antonio — opens Monday.
“We’re excited about the move, and we hope the community is, too,” said Becky Hernandez, a strategic communications specialist with the U.S. Postal Service.
The post office has been on Broadway in space leased from HE-B since Feb. 1, 1970. Seven years later, the H-E-B store was transformed into Central Market, that avatar of trendy comestibles and upscale shopping.
Hernandez said her agency received notice in 2018 that H-E-B would not be renewing its lease in January 2020, as it had other plans.
Central Market is mum about what’s next for the space. An official said the grocery store chain “continues to evaluate several options to best serve our customers.”
Given what’s the norm at Central
Markets elsewhere in the state, a curbside pickup facility wouldn’t be out of the realm.
Ernesto Saucedo, the Alamo Heights station manager who oversees its 10 postal clerks, said that while it’s hard to leave a location so ingrained in the neighborhood, the expiration of the lease, in some ways, is a very good thing.
For one, the water problem. Post office customers probably don’t know about the vast, subterranean carrier center. There, beneath the post office retail area and the parking lot, some 65 workers come and go as they pick up and deliver mail. For years, the ceiling of the facility has leaked prodigiously whenever it has rained.
“They’ve tried to fix spots here and there, even injecting stuff in the ground above, but nothing worked,” Saucedo said.
The carrier facility is moving to a separate building at 1948 Austin Highway that most recently was a special events center.
Longtime customers of the Alamo Heights location said they had mixed feelings about the move.
“I don’t like it, but I understand it,” said Ron Greenberg, 80, who lives in the neighborhood, owns a company nearby and has been frequenting the post office since the ’70s. “It’s bad when it floods, but you can’t expect them to close and fix the parking lot. We’ll just all learn to live with it.”
Mary Francine Danis, 74, who made her way carefully into the lobby using her cane, said she’d been coming to the post office for 20 years.
“I’ll miss the convenience, with Central Market next door,” she said. “But I will get used to it.”
Saucedo said many people in the neighborhood walk to the post office, using the trip for exercise combined with a stop at Central Market. They include the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, the nuns who live next door at the University of the Incarnate Word.
“They do have a shuttle, so I think they’ll be OK,” he said.
Saucedo said the Alamo Heights office handles 500 to 800 transactions a day. (That’s nothing: The lone post office in Eagle Pass, which he managed until a year ago, handles 1,500 transactions a day.)
The relocation will involve about 20 workers and five trailers, Saucedo said, and is being managed by the Postal Service’s maintenance department. In addition to equipment and other materials, workers will have to move more than 1,200 PO boxes.
Except for the location, nothing changes for the customers, Hernandez said. The lobby will continue to be open 24/7 for PO box access and mail drop boxes. A grand opening is planned in the next 30 days, she said.
The new building was constructed by and is owned by the Postal Service. So chances are, it will be around at least another 50 years or however long the Postal Service carries on — through snow, rain and gloom of night, as the expression goes.