Postal Tour: Mankato, Minnesota

Mankato is a little city with a rich history, located in south central Minnesota about 75 miles southwest of the Twin Cities. It lies along the Minnesota River, a tributary of the Mississippi that merges with said by Saint Paul. The river serves as a county border and separates Mankato (population 40,000) from North Mankato (13,000). This situation inspired Mankato's motto: "A Little Twin Cities, A Lot Minnesota." The river propelled much of Mankato's early development, and the City of Mankato's website notes that "by 1854, U.S. mail was delivered regularly to Mankato due to the efforts of General Store owner George Marsh."

Local sources claim that the town's name was originally Mahkato, meaning "greenish blue earth to [the area's] first inhabitants, the Dakota Indians". Indeed, Mankato is the county seat of Blue Earth County. According to a currently unavailable link referenced by Wikipedia, "a typographical error by a clerk established the name as Mankato" instead of Mahkato.

Here's a local post office map that shows the sites discussed in this story:


At the end of the 19th century Mankato was among the largest cities in Minnesota, and the city needed a post office that met its stature. That building still serves as the Mankato main post office today, and an analysis of USPS's Owned Facilities Report reveals that this is among the oldest post office buildings anywhere in the country that is still in operation today. The City of Mankato has published a thorough walking tour of the city and states the following about the post office: "This building was built in 1895 and remodeled in 1933 to the structure seen today. It is constructed of Mankato Kasota stone. Since it blends seamlessly, you can’t tell the difference between additions. The second floor was used for Federal offices and courts. Those who served our country during the last great wars left from here."

The Federal Judicial Center has made available an image from the National Archives taken in 1900. I've edited the photo and made it available on the PMCC's Minnesota Post Office Photos page as well as here.



The building was and is still stunning. The local stone is a modest yet distinct orange, and though the clock tower (a common sight for 19th-century federal buildings) was removed during the building's extension to the south (toward where the photographer stood with respect to the above image), the grandeur of the building is evident. The chimney remains and the setbacks above the main building entrances are unique. The signage winds perfectly above the arched doorways. The length of the building doubled during its extension, but the consistency of the architecture makes the front of the building appear seamless.

112 years after the above photograph was taken, I stood at roughly the same spot and snapped this view of the post office as it now stands:


According to USPS documents the "Mankato MPO is a USPS-owned 69,839 square-foot facility that houses 42 [carrier] routes, Postmaster and staff, the Area-2 Manager of Post Office Operations and staff, retail and post office box operations."

Across the river North Mankato possesses a more modest post office, albeit one with part of the local art walking tour in front of it:


According to the most recent USPS Leased Facilities Report available, the North Mankato post office lease calls for a mere 667 square feet of leased space at $6,160 per year. (That particular contract expired in July; the current cost isn't available.) The post office is a finance unit, housing retail operations and PO Boxes but no carriers.

Mankato's Processing and Distribution Facility (P&DF) was the mail processing hub for southwest Minnesota until implementation of USPS's Area Mail Processing plan took (or will soon take) those operations to Minneapolis. According to USPS documents posted prior to consolidation, "the existing 78,734 square-foot facility on an 8.0 acre site was originally occupied in 1992. The Mankato [P&DF] currently processes all originating and destinating letters and flats, and incoming Priority/FCM parcels for the 560 and 561 offices. In addition to processing operations, the facility houses a Business Mail Entry Unit (BMEU)."

Mankato, MN P&DF:


The facility held more than 100 jobs until what will be the consolidation of both originating (incoming, to-be-cancelled) and destinating (processed, to-be-delivered) mail operations; the facility continues to be used for a handful of postal operations. Originally slated to occur in 2014, cancelling operations were moved to Minneapolis on June 1. An April 11 article in The Mankato Free Press states: "The facility's larger operation is the sorting of mail coming in from other processing centers around the country and sending it on to the proper post offices in a region that stretches from Hills (just east of the South Dakota line) to Albert Lea to Waseca to Belle Plaine. That work is anticipated to be transferred to Minneapolis in just under a year." Local APWU president Paul Rodgers said he expected those consolidations to occur this coming February. Finally, the massive Minneapolis/St. Paul Network Distribution Center (NDC) will absorb a few other operations from Mankato.

Like the North Mankato branch post office, Mankato's Madison East Station is a non-carrier finance facility with retail operations and PO Boxes. Located in the back of a sizable shopping plaza, the 1,326-square-foot facility is leased until 2017 for $16,170 per year.

Mankato, MN: Madison East Station post office:
Finally, there Mankato's Hy-Vee supermarket has a Contract Postal Unit at the customer service counter in the front of the store.

Mankato, MN: Hy-Vee CPU

Mail Processing Plant Photos and Observations, Part II

First, there are a few observations that I find interesting with regard to the Area Mail Processing consolidations:
1. Chicago could be left without its own postmark if the Cardiss Collins P&DC downtown loses its originating mail to suburban plants. Ditto Fort Worth, whose P&DC would be responsible for destinating mail to Dallas while losing originating mail to the North Texas P&DC. Not to mention New Orleans, which loses everything out to Baton Rouge.

2. The amount of mail crossing state and postal District borders to be processed would now be astronomical: some Connecticut Valley mail would be processed in the Westchester District; there's Baltimore District mail headed to Central Pennsylvania; Nevada-Sierra processing occurring in Salt Lake; northeast Texas mail handled in Louisiana while the mail processing equivalent of musical chairs occurs among the Dallas and Fort Worth Districts. In fact, New York's Triboro District might be the first left without any originating mail processing facility if all its mail gets postmarked in New York's Morgan P&DC.

3. Given the dissolution of mail processing boundaries by state and District lines, what do the AMP consolidations mean for the postal hierarchy, and who's responsible for resolving consumer affairs and other issues as they pertain to mail handling?

4. Building on the above, would Virginia residents really be pleased with a postmark from North Carolina; Texas residents with a postmark from Shreveport; Tennessee residents with a postmark from Atlanta; Savannah residents with a cancel from either SC, GA, or FL? Et cetera.

5. What about security issues? What if, say, dangerous pieces of mail couldn't be sourced locally since mail processed at a given plant could have originated from any of 500 post offices across three states as opposed to a localized cluster?


So, let's look at some photos of scheduled-to-close P&DC/Fs that are a part of their hosts' respective main post offices. Will these locations be moving to smaller, predominantly retail sites now, or be used as "delivery hubs"?

Salem, Oregon P&DF

> Originating and destinating mail to be consolidated into the Portland, OR P&DC.

When I was visiting the MPO I met the philatelic clerk, who was very friendly and offered to get the Postmaster's autograph on a couple of the cards I got hand-cancelled. She mailed them back to me later that week. As far as location, note the continuation of a trend that you might have noticed the emergence in my previous entry, of on the map below -- namely, the proximity of the processing plant to the local predominant highway. The present mail processing system wasn't created without thought.



White River Junction, VT P&DC

> Originating and destinating mail to be consolidated into the Manchester, NH and Burlington, VT P&DCs.



Ah, White River Junction. This facility has easy access to two Interstates and has been around since 1984. The MPO also moved out here from a beautiful downtown WPA office that became known as Lyman Station. Officially closed last summer, Lyman Station had been a box unit with no retail services for some time. The current location, among a (Vermont-sized) sea of car dealers, exhibits decidedly less grandeur.

[discontinued:] White River Junction, VT: Lyman Station post office





On the plus side, the study to consolidate the decidedly large Manchester, NH P&DC (which shares residence with the Manchester MPO) was disapproved.

In Pre-moriam: Processing Plant Photos, et al

Pre.S. There's a Part II to this entry, which includes observations and questions regarding consolidation plans.

Well, it seems nothing can stop USPS management now: the list of 223 processing plant consolidations is out. That said, and with the presumption that this process will be extremely difficult to stop, I present to you photographs of some of the plants that are slated to close. I started photographing P&DC/Fs about a year ago. I've been to perhaps 20 all in all, but will be presenting just a few here. More can follow.

Note: Anyone who would like to submit photos of their own plant [exterior] is more than welcome to; I'm happy to make more posts or put together a full gallery in the future. If you have any memorable stories or funny anecdotes about your processing plant, also feel free to pass that along. I'll archive it.

Also: Definitions might be in order, since I've noticed some folks found my site by searching for the meaning to some terminology. Originating mail is that which has been deposited by the mailer and which is entering the mailstream. It generally needs to be cancelled, coded, and routed to other processing centers for delivery. This is the P: Processing in P&DC. Destinating mail (the D: Distribution in P&DC) is that which is has been processed, brought to its final sorting site, and which is getting ready to be delivered.

Southern Connecticut P&DC; Wallingford, CT

> Originating and destinating mail to be consolidated into the Hartford, CT P&DC.

USPS has owned 24 Research Parkway in Wallingford off I-91, a town halfway between New Haven and Hartford, since 1995. The P&DC measures about 400 feet by 800 feet and handles mail for the 063 and 064 ZIP code prefixes. Mail postmarked here receives "SOUTHERN CT 064" spray cancels. I've been unable to validate whether it maintains a hand-cancel / dating device with its name on it.



Stamford P&DC; Stamford, CT

To be consolidated into the Westchester, NY P&DC (both originating and destinating mail).

Driving home from Rhode Island one summer Saturday I followed a convoy of mail trucks taking exit 6 on I-95 and soon discovered the Stamford P&DC. I popped into the parking lot at 7, asked if anyone knew about any potential hand-cancels inside, and a sorter volunteered to help me get my cards postmarked with a Stamford P&DC round dater while I waited outside. How nice is that? I hope his commute doesn't get too difficult with the move to Westchester.

The Stamford P&DC is located on an industrial/commercial strip southwest of downtown Stamford and has easy access to I-95. It measures about 350 by 400 feet, and USPS has owned the site since 1988. This facility handles the mail for southwestern Connecticut post offices.



Altoona P&DF; Duncansville, PA


> To be consolidated into the Johnstown, PA P&DF (both originating and destinating mail).

A relatively recent plant, USPS has been at this site since 1998. The facility sits back off a nondescript road near I-99 south of Altoona. The area otherwise resembles sprawl. It doesn't look too big from the front, though satellite imagery shows that the building measures about 250 by 500 feet.



Updates from previous entries
Easton, MD P&DF: Two proposals were withdrawn: the consolidation of the Easton P&DF into Baltimore and the Wilmington, DE P&DC into Philadelphia. Instead, the current plan being studied is to consolidate Easton, MD mail into Wilmington.

Frederick, MD P&DF: Save the Post Office reports that issues abound with regard to the Frederick plant's consolidation into Baltimore. I witnessed hints of this in western Maryland right after the final transition occurred: at one PO a woman berated the clerk for her Monday's mail arriving Tuesday morning. The clerk was apologetic and noted that mail trucks which used to arrive at 7:30 from Frederick were, at least then, arriving at 11:00 from Baltimore.

Long Island Processing Plants: The Queens P&DC is being consolidated into Brooklyn. Meanwhile, "Triboro NY 112" cancels might be a thing of the past as originating mail from the Brooklyn P&DC is to be consolidated into New York's Morgan P&DC. This implies that Brooklyn would be a destinating mail-only plant, also handling that for Staten Island. The Western Nassau Mail Processing Facility will remain open, as will the New York L&DC in Bethpage.

Here are a couple of photos of the positively massive Morgan P&DC, near the New York Main Post Office on the west side of Manhattan:

End of the Line: Frederick, MD P&DF

In 1995, Maryland's second-largest incorporated city heralded the advent of a new sectional mail processing facility. Smaller than a full-blown Processing and Distribution Center (P&DC), this P&D Facility (P&DF) housed 180 postal employees who were involved with the processing and cancellation of mail entering the mailstream from, as well as the distribution of mail getting delivered to, at least 60 217XX, 215XX, and some 267XX-ZIP-coded offices. The plant has been subject to a protracted two-year closure procedure which has gradually stripped away all of its responsibilities, and which will result in its final day of [diminished] operation this Friday, November 18.



I recently visited the facility while touring threatened post offices of northern Maryland.

The facility is located in Frederick's Industrial Center East southeast of town, south of I-70. Its address is 1550 Tilco Drive, an industrial loop which features a number of auto shops and equipment companies. Near to the P&DF is a colorful attempt at an industrial strip mall which is largely vacant. The processing site, too, will be added to the real estate market.

The building itself is par for the course as far as the architecture of small USPS processing facilities: a squat, flat building approximately 300 feet square, for an estimated 90,000 square feet of overall floor space.

USPS shifted mail processing and cancellation operations to the Suburban Maryland processing plant by July 1, 2010, although consolidation with the Baltimore processing plant is the end result of the operations transfer, which was approved this August 3. In Frederick their machinery is gone, and distribution to local offices has been phased out since Columbus Day. When I recently arrived at the facility, there were a handful of cars in the lot. Again, the plant closes for all time this Friday, November 18.

Mail that would otherwise be processed in Frederick and stay within Washington County, MD still arrives overnight according to USPS's Postal Price Calculator, though I question whether service to portions of Pennsylvania suffered; a letter being sent from Frederick, MD to Altoona, PA, 130 miles away, or to Harrisburg, PA, 70 miles away, arrives in two days. I do not know what the service standard was before the shift to Baltimore, but mail originating in Baltimore receives the same treatment.

Of those 180 workers at the Frederick plant, nearby Hagerstown's newspaper the Herald-Mail states that workers will most likely be shifted to Baltimore's larger processing facility, which is 50 miles away. Of course, they aren't the easiest 50 miles for mail trucks when Baltimore traffic and Maryland hills are involved; but I digress. Some workers could be transferred to closer-by post offices.

Here is the main entrance (or at least, that for visitors) of the building:


Philatelically speaking, since the P&DF no longer processes mail, it has no cancelling devices, although it still possesses one black-inked round dater which is unique to its 21704 ZIP code; it says "Frederick MD 21704"; there is no indication of "P&DF" or the like.

USPS closed, -- rather, consolidated -- the plant due to what it claimed were $4.2 million in annual savings. Of course that number is not without dispute, but I don't know the details. Some against the change: "There are numerous reports across the country about the botched attempts of consolidations at other facilities," the workers wrote, citing audits by the U.S. Office of the Inspector General. Part of the justification for the Frederick closure involved workload declines; regardless, at the end the plant still processed nearly one million pieces of mail a day. (These figures, once again, are from the Herald-Mail article.)

The author's back-of-the-envelope calculation (est. 160 workers transferred * est. 350 work days a year * extra 100-mile commute / average 22 mpg * est. $3.50 per gallon of gasoline) suggests that savings realized by the postal service result in the transferal of nearly $900,000 in direct out-of-pocket expenses for affected postal workers in fuel costs alone. (Not to mention the wear and depreciation incurred by putting one's car through an extra 30,000 miles of driving per year.) Of course, there are additional transit costs incurred by USPS's fleet to bring all the mail down to Baltimore and back. I also suspect it will inhibit other mail processing, such as bulk mail. (Which to some might not come across as the biggest sin.) I don't know enough about parcel processing.

Further details of the Area Mail Processing study about Frederick can be found here -- note that there are two listings for Frederick, one for originating, and one for destinating mail, along with those from processing plant studies across the country.

On the Hit List: Long Island Processing Plants

Edited 10/9/11: 5:25pm: I had some facts wrong; not all of these facilities are being studied for consolidation into the Brooklyn P&DC. Information has been revised.

Edited 5/28/2017: This entry has long merited revision, since some of my statements might have jumped the closure gun. USPS revised many of its consolidation plans well after publication of this entry. Noting that this page is cited on Wikipedia, to fact-checkers, please conduct additional research to validate more recently approved and disapproved consolidation activities. For example, as of 2017 the following facilities continue to process outgoing first-class mail from New York City and Long Island: New York, NY (Morgan Annex) and Mid-Island, NY. Brooklyn P&DC only distributes destinating mail. Queens P&DC processes packages only. The New York L&DC in Bethpage has since been renamed. And Western Nassau doesn't do too much anymore...

---

For those of you who don't already know, USPS not only wants to close down its small-town and poor-neighborhood post offices; it also wants to shutter half its processing plants and make our mail substantially slower as well! Yet another brilliant idea to re-invigorate the postal service and rally the American people to its side. [End sarcasm.]

Currently, Long Island [Nassau and Suffolk County for our purposes] maintains three mail processing and/or distribution facilities, each with different functions. USPS is studying the closure or reshuffling of [read: Management would like to close] just about everything. Let's see what we've got:

1. Mid-Island Processing and Distribution Facility; Melville, NY

This is Long Island's heavy lifter. It takes care of the First-Mail cancellations and processing for about 190 post offices that serve 2.5+-million Long Islanders. Its spray-cancel reads "LONG ISLAND NY 117", though it also has a mechanical canceling machine whose '[stamp-]killer' is in the shape of Long Island itself! Mail processing operations from the Western Nassau P&DC [see below] have already been consolidated into this facility; USPS would like to shove the "Mid-Island Annex" into here as well. I don't know the exact function of that nearby location, but since its listed address is the same as the plant itself, the consolidation sounds rather trivial.

2. New York Logistical and Distribution Center; Bethpage, NY

Formerly known as Priority Mail Processing Centers (PMPCs), L&DCs expedite rapid-delivery parcels. This is a positively huge facility, and based on the photo of exterior hedges above, not one the public ever gets to see. (I DID get to see a bit more of it around the back, but so as not to piss too many postal lawyers off I won't post a photo of the giant yellow cube that is the employee/visitor entrance here.) We're talking dozens of large trucks. They'd like to shove this into the smaller Western Nassau P&DC; which is odd because the Western Nassau P&DC is... well, let's find out.

3. Western Nassau Mail Processing Facility; Garden City, NY
This facility no longer cancels mail; its purpose is to get the mail distributed to its local offices for final delivery to businesses and residences. Unlike the other facilities described in this post, this facility also maintains a retail window for customers. If this gets closed, I'm guessing that window would be gone as well. Now USPS is looking at taking this out of Nassau and shoving it all into the Mid-Island complex.


But wait, there's more! Act now and if you close three, you get one free!

4. Queens Processing and Distribution Center; College Point, Flushing, NY


[Seen from the shopping center across the street:]


All mail cancellation and processing operations were moved from Staten Island and Queens two years ago: any mail deposited anywhere within the boroughs of Brooklyn, Queens, or Staten Island gets this handy-dandy postmark that reads "TRIBORO NY 112 // BKLYN QNS STATEN ISL // [[date]]". [The name "Triboro" is mythic and arbitrary, referring to the fact that this postal District covers Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island -- NOT the three boroughs connected by New York City's Triborough Bridge, for the record.] The Queens P&DC currently maintains mail distribution operations for Queens offices, but even that seems likely to be relegated to Brooklyn or the Morgan Annex in Manhattan. I think it's stupid to drive mail into Queens from Manhattan. Are they all going to depend on the L.I.E.? Consolidation into Brooklyn is likely inevitable.

Bonus: The mythic Brooklyn Processing and Distribution Center; Brooklyn, NY


This location is positively huge. Or as some might say, it's ginormous. It's got tens of acres of floorspace, as well as postal District offices upstairs. It even has its own bus stop right in front of the primary employee entrance! Once again, since these photos were taken on public streets, off postal property, it's perfectly legal to take and publish them. You could just as easily see the same thing on Google Street View, here.

Annnd, USPS is thinking of consolidating the Brooklyn P&DC into the Morgan P&DC in western Manhattan. How would we get hundreds of additional mail trucks into and out of western Manhattan all day? No idea. To USPS management, the pluses of closing these processing facilities go beyond perceived cost efficiency. You see, each USPS plant has its own labor union, and in this instance they could effectively eliminate four entire union branches. So the whole procedure also serves as a convenient way of cutting the power of USPS's labor unions which would, of course, make it even easier for USPS to get its way in the future. With USPS's current plan, not only would half the country's mail processing infrastructure be eliminated, but 250 organized sets of workers could be wiped off the map. I should note that this is just my personal speculation, but I would still put money on it. Yet another depressing facet to the whole plan.

What's closed? Talbot County, Maryland

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First off, here's the post office of St. Michaels, MD:


The Saint Michaels, MD post office used to maintain two Community Post Offices (CPOs), but now has none. The first CPO, McDaniel, MD, shared a striking blue building with a flower shop, just off Rt. 33, and closed in 2005. Here's that location as it stands today...

Former site -- St. Michaels, MD: McDaniel Post Office [CPO]


The second CPO closed April 30, 2011, and was located in the side of someone's house [10463 Claiborne Landing Rd.]. Boxes were moved to the nearby Village Hall (which was just converted from a church and inaugurated this year; packages too large to fit in such are picked up at the St. Michaels post office.

Former site -- St. Michaels, MD: Claiborne Post Office [CPO]


The independent Neavitt Post Office, south of Bozman, MD, closed Sept. 19, 2003 due to damage incurred by Hurricane Isabel; it never reopened.

Easton, MD is the area's largest town, boasting nearly 15,000 residents. For four years Easton's Tastee Freez ice cream shop on Rt. 50 [8356 Ocean Gateway] housed a Contract Postal Unit (CPU), but that closed June 30, 2011. The shop has just changed ownership and the maintenance of a CPU wasn't feasible, and the post office generally did not succeed at expanding the shop's core business. In fact, the need to maintain a qualified postal clerk at all times and to immediately accommodate any postal customers often impeded on the business's ability to serve its other customers. For the time being a blue collection box resides outside Tastee Freez's southern entrance.

Former site -- Easton, MD: Tastee Freez Post Office [CPU]


Potential Closures:
Sherwood, MD Post Office:

The Sherwood, MD post office is currently being studied as part of USPS's "Expanded Access" initiative, and could be closed within the next few months.

Similarly, Easton, MD's Eastern Shore Processing and Distribution Facility could be shuttered as part of USPS's recently announced mail-slowing processing plant-eliminating proposal.

Eastern Shore P&DF / Easton Processing and Distribution Facility

DPO'd: West Jersey P&DC

In the past I've mentioned in passing a couple of non-retail carrier-only facilities (annexes). However, this is the first time I've ever covered a non-retail processing facility on this blog. Last September 27, on my way to Cincinnati, I was told by a couple of post offices that it was the last day of mail handling operations the West Jersey P&DC [Processing and Distribution Center]. Unfortunately I couldn't visit it that day, but I was able to find its former site and take a photograph on Saturday.

Before its closing, 309 employees worked at the mail sorting and distribution plant in Whippany, NJ. It was not involved in the canceling of incoming mail, though it did process the mail for delivery in northwest New Jersey.

From this full article at nj.com: Operations were to be consolidated: "While the Post Office has announced that 144 employees would be given positions at mail distribution centers in Edison and Teterboro, nearly 165 clerks and maintenance staff are unsure of their future, Dougherty said." Many employees would be reassigned, but others would likely leave the postal service for good.

This weekend, I found the sprawling complex deserted, with two postal (police?) cars occupying the parking lot, which otherwise had capacity for hundreds of vehicles.

West Jersey Processing and Distribution Center:


The sign reads:
United States Postal Service
West Jersey P&D Center
Whippany, N.J. 07999-9998