News

Ask Matt ... about poor condition of the post office

By Bill Moss, Published: April 9, 2015

Q. For years the post office on Fifth Avenue has looked in dire need of maintenance. The peeling paint, rust stains and mildew are an eyesore. Who is responsible for its upkeep?

Chasing down an answer had more stops and turns than a Carolina corn maze, but let’s start with what we know. The Fifth Avenue building was built in 1966 and has a present tax value of $1.5 million. All 11 postal facilities in Henderson County except the Carrier Annex on Lakewood Road (behind Sam’s Club) are privately owned and leased to the U.S. Postal Service. Each has a separate postmaster who reports to a district supervisor in Charlotte. The postmaster of the Fifth Avenue facility is Yvonne Valentine. You can reach her at 692-2548. She also manages the Carrier Annex where mail is sorted.
The Postal Service would not disclose the terms of the building lease but I located the owners, Larry and Elizabeth Hinkle, who spoke freely about the building.
“When a car crashed through the post office’s plate glass window it was almost two weeks before we knew about it,” Elizabeth Hinkle said. “We don’t hear from the local postmaster. We get contacted from the USPS leasing division people in Denver, Colorado.”
The Hinkles, obviously frustrated with the system, said that it is often a challenge to figure out who must fix something. Once USPS renovates something, it’s their responsibility to maintain. The owners told me that painting the building’s exterior and repaving the parking lot is the responsibility of the postmaster and USPS has a budget for that plus other maintenance items. “Yvonne [Valentine] is doing a fine job, but she must work within the bureaucracy,” Elizabeth Hinkle said. Larry Hinkle added: “They are in trouble,” referring to the postal services.
The Postal Service clearly has issues. It lost $754 million last quarter. It publicly admits that without fundamental changes, the losses will continue to spiral. Congress has directed that USPS not be funded by taxpayers but instead with cost cuts and revenue from its products and services. Maybe this explains why the parking at the Fifth Avenue facility is inadequate and the stop signs are so old that they’ve faded to pink.

Alyssah Farah, a spokeswoman for U.S. Rep. Mark Meadows, said the congressman's aides had contacted the Postal Service about the poor upkeep.

“We were given assurance there are no plans to tear it down or to rebuild a new facility at that location,” Farah said. “They said they were doing minor repairs. What she did point out was there was a difference if a facility is leased or owned and that one happens to be leased.

I spoke to architect Wayland Shamburger, whose studio is next door to the Fifth Avenue Post Office. Reacting to the question of appearance, he said pragmatically that without an overriding business interest there is no incentive to improve the building’s appearance. He did, however, think that some relatively inexpensive aesthetic improvements could be made such as changing the exterior material of the building or adding some landscaping.
Postmaster Valentine answered few of my questions and I was directed to the USPS corporate communications office in Fayetteville. Out of curiosity, I asked someone there at what point the Fifth Avenue facility would hit critical mass whereby additional parking areas would be acquired or a new facility built. I was told that such planning is a totally internal process not shared with the general public. In regard to a rumor circulating here in town that the postal service plans to close the Fifth Avenue post office and move operations to the Hendersonville Annex, I found no official confirmation of that.
Eager to satisfy my curiosity of what a brand new post office would look like, I found one just up the road in Highlands. It seems that a local concerned citizen with some deep resources didn’t like the location or the appearance of the old post office so she offered to build a new one and foot the entire bill herself. Highlands Town Manager Bob Frye said that project ended up costing $7 million to acquire the land then design and build the new facility. “Because of all the federal red tape and the fact that USPS didn’t want it, the project took three years,” said Frye. “They fought her every step of the way and former Congressman Heath Shuler had to intervene to finally make it happen.” Highlands’ handsome new building has a tax value four times that of our own flagship facility.
Obviously showing its age, Hendersonville’s Fifth Avenue Post Office will be 50 years old next year. I don’t anticipate a gala celebration but maybe by then we’ll see a fresh coat of paint and some new stop signs.

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Matt Matteson researches readers' questions for the Hendersonville Lightning. Send questions to askmattm@gmail.com.