Back in November, the Postal Service announced that it was opening a new Sorting & Delivery Center in Pompano Beach, Florida. As discussed in this post, the facility centralized carrier operations — about 250 routes — from five “spoke” post offices: Pompano Beach Main, Margate Branch, Coral Springs Branch, Coconut Creek Branch, and the Tropical Reef Station.
This week the Postal Service announced that it plans to relocate the Tropical Reef Station at 1950 NE 6th Street.
Normally USPS announcements about proposed relocations include an explanation for the need to relocate. Usually it’s a breakdown in the lease renewal negotiations, or perhaps damage to the building after a flood or fire. The Tropical Reef notification does not include any explanation for the relocation.
That’s probably because the Postal Service doesn’t want to acknowledge that the move is taking place because the post office is too big now that it has relocated the carriers to the Pompano Beach S&DC.
The relocation notice invites customers to submit written comments, but there won’t be a public meeting. That’s because the Postal Service changed its policies on relocations back in June 2023 and ended the requirement for a meeting.
The Tropical Reef post office has 48,403 square feet. The Postal Service is looking for a space with approximately 5,000 square feet, for just a retail operation.
The Main Post Office of Pompano Beach is officially the facility on Atlantic Avenue, but the Tropical Reef Station is the main “downtown” office for Pompano Beach. It’s located across from the Amphitheater and next to the Pompano Beach credit union and Cowboy Café.
The relocation announcement says the Postal Service is looking for a building within a one-mile radius of the existing location. That could put the new post office far from downtown.
The Postal Service has been leasing Tropical Reef Station since 1962. Based on USPS leased facilities reports, the annual lease costs are something on the order of $450,000, and the current lease probably runs to sometime in 2025.
The Tropical Reef Station had 175 employees and 91 routes covering three ZIPs — 33060, 33062, and 33064 — with 64,000 delivery points. Now that all the carriers have gone, all that’s left is a handful of retail clerks.
Whatever savings that will come from relocating to a smaller space will be largely offset by the added expenses associated with having carriers drive farther to their routes. It’s 7 miles and 18 minutes between the Tropical Reef office and the Pompano Beach S&DC. The routes on the southern end are 11 miles and 30 minutes away — the maximum “reach” between S&DCs and spoke offices in the new network. All that back and forth driving between the S&DC and the routes adds up a lot of carrier time, fuel costs, vehicle maintenance costs, and other expenses. But don’t expect the Postal Service to provide a detailed explanation of the cost savings from the relocation that includes these added costs.
The relocation of the Tropical Reef post office is one of the first examples of what will happen to hundreds, perhaps thousands, of post offices as the S&DC implementation continues over the coming months and years. It’s been clear since the S&DC plan became public, back in the summer of 2022, that this is where things are headed.
Many post offices will be relocated to small storefronts while others will simply be closed. Leases will go unrenewed, and post office buildings owned by the Postal Service, many of them historic, will be sold.
The year 2025 does not promise to be a good one for post offices.
— Steve Hutkins
Photo: Tropical Reef Station (Michael d’Oliveira/New Pelican)
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