Hopes Are High That Shopping Center Postal Unit Will Reopen by November 1

Myrna K. Bearse

Almost everyone in town has a found a way to get around the long wait at the Palmer Square Post Office when they don't happen to have a spare 45 minutes to stand on line. Some drive to Kingston, others to Rocky Hill or West Windsor, and still others have come to depend on the postal facility at the Princeton Shopping Center.

But with the specter of the pre-holiday postal rush looming, this facility is closed – and has been since September 1. Postal officials are hopeful, however, that it will reopen November 1 with a new contractor, Glenmarle Woolworks.

Skaters' Alliance, where the facility had been located, is gone, to be replaced by an expansion of Glenmarle Woolworks. Lee Herford, owner of Glenmarle, wants to take over the facility and hopes to keep it open longer hours than before: from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays, until 7 p.m. one or two nights a week, and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Shopping Center General Manager Chris Hanington said the Skaters' Alliance lost its lease and didn't notify the Postal Service. Reopening with a new contractor [Woolworks] "is sort of a bureaucratic process," she said, adding that she, like everybody else involved, is hoping for an early November opening.

A fair amount of work has to be done, however, before this can happen. In addition to providing 40 hours of training for those operating the new facility, the Postal Service has to get its facilities crews into the shop to determine the kind of counter that needs to be installed.

Armand Cistaro, an employee of the Postal Services marketing/retail department, said the shopping center's contract postal unit – as facilities of this type are called – will offer the same services as had previously been offered, and possibly more. "In talking to Lee, she seems very enthusiastic about this. She wants to have a little bit more of a variety," he said.

Contract postal units generally provide stamp sales, express mail and priority mail service, domestic and international mail service, and signature confirmation, said Mr. Cistaro, "basically almost everything you could do at a regular post office."

Well-Run Facility

Ms. Herford said she plans to have an efficient well-run postal facility. "The Postal Service is starting a new program, and I think we're the flagship installation."

The postal station is as much a part of the shopping center as the center courtyard. Pat Cherry, who moved to Princeton in 1946, said she remembered it in 1954 or 1955 being in a toy store run by George Habib. The booth then moved to Center Stationers, but she couldn't recall how long it stayed there.

After that, she believes, the postal station moved into the shopping center itself and became a self-service unit between what is now McCaffrey's and Bon Appetit.

"Eventually it was vandalized," she said, "and as far as I can recall, the next place it moved to was the Pants Saloon. Eventually the Pants Saloon moved to the other side and morphed into Skaters' Alliance."

Although it is not definite, all the parties involved – not to mention all the Princeton residents who have come to depend on it – hope that November 1 will bring a new, modern and efficient postal facility to the Princeton Shopping Center.