Grindstone fire chief offers empty building to post office
REDSTONE TWP. – When Grindstone Fire Chief Rich Lenk broke his leg sliding into third base last August, he found that he had to change the way he did things, including getting his mail. Lenk gets his mail at the Grindstone Post Office, but the office isn’t handicapped accessible. Lenk offered a proposal that would change that, but it doesn’t involve ramps or other modifications. It involves moving the post office.
Lenk said his fire department has the perfect solution.
“We have half a building we aren’t using. We’d like to rent it out,” Lenk said. “Right now, we store boats and people’s horse trailers there to help with the heating bills.”
Lenk said he offered the facility to the postal service, saying it would provide four times the current space, complete handicapped accessibility and an indoor area to load up to three postal vehicles at one time.
Lenk said he’s even offered to make whatever modifications the postal service would need to have done to the facility, but so far, the postal service hasn’t shown any interest, Lenk said.
Tad Kelley, who handles public relations for the postal service out of Pittsburgh, said the postal service doesn’t move post offices by taking unsolicited offers.
“We would solicit bids,” Kelley said. “We wouldn’t go to one entity and say we wanted to put our facility there.”
According to Kelley, postal regulations require a lengthy process to relocate any facility, including public notice and soliciting bids from developers.
“The process often takes more than 24 months to complete. Given the limited budget available to cover facilities costs, few such projects are considered unless they are prompted by extraordinary community growth or a significant safety issue that cannot be cured in the existing facility. Neither of those conditions was present in Grindstone,” Kelley stated.
The U.S. Postal Service has a lease through April 30, 2014 at the current Grindstone Post Office site, with an option to renew it through April 30, 2019, according to Kelley.
Kelley said the issue of accessibility at the Grindstone office is also in the process of being addressed. While the building is too close to the road to construct an appropriate ramp into the building, Kelley stated, bids are being sought for modifications to improve the accessibility inside the building.