Glendale City Council calls for no sale of historic post office

Asks the U.S. Postal Service to reconsider plan to sell downtown post office.

August 20, 2013|By Brittany Levine, brittany.levine@latimes.com

This historic photo of the U.S. Post Office on 313. E. Broadway… (Courtesy of the…)

The City Council on Tuesday called on the U.S. Postal Service to keep open a historic downtown post office that is at risk of closure.

In addition, advocates of historic preservation and postal service users rallied in favor of keeping the 80-year-old building at 313 E. Broadway in service during a meeting hosted by the postal service last month.

"It's a shame what's going on with the U.S. Postal Service," said Councilwoman Laura Friedman before she and her colleagues voted unanimously for a resolution protecting the post office from sale. "I doubt this resolution is going to carry much weight with anybody, but I think it's important for us to take a stand."

The council's plea comes on the heels of a similar request made by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) earlier this year.

In a January letter, Schiff asked the postal service to abandon its "misguided" plans to sell the facility.

The postal service plans to consolidate its mail processing locations and significantly reduce its workforce by next year in order to cut costs nationwide.

City officials said the closure of the downtown post office would not only negatively impact current users, but it could hurt the demand for postal services as people begin to fill the new apartment complexes popping up downtown.

"Having a central post office in our downtown when we have a couple thousand units coming into our downtown is very important to our residents," Friedman said.

The property is on the National Register of Historic Places and the Glendale Register of Historic Resources, designations that could make it difficult for those who buy the building to make changes to it.

In a report, city officials said there are three other postal service facilities within a roughly 1-mile radius of the downtown site that could be closed without the historic property hurdles.

Officials said they'd be willing to help tweak zoning and development potential of the other sites to save the historic building.

Since the postal service has done a cost-benefit analysis that shows the downtown facility is too large, city officials suggested in the resolution that the federal agency scale back its operation within the historic building and share the space with a compatible public or private organization such as the Los Angeles County Courthouse in Glendale.

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