Portland State students looking for a post office will soon be walking half a mile farther into downtown.
PSU’s local United States Postal Service office, University Station, is moving to Southwest First Avenue and Main Street in Jan. 2013. Now located at 1505 SW Sixth Ave., the office will be moving because a new lease could not be negotiated with the building’s owner, a German trading company.
close Jan. 2013. A new office will open at 100 SW Main St. to replace it. Miles Sanguinetti / Vanguard Staff
On-campus students will not notice a change in their mail delivery, USPS spokespeople said. However, faculty and departmental mail may notice a slight delay in service as PSU Mail Services will not be able to deliver as quickly.
The new Waterfront Station office at 100 SW Main St. will open with nearly identical retail and post office box services.
PSU Mail Services in the University Services Building delivers all non-student campus mail. It also provides postal, UPS and FedEx services for the campus community, although it does not sell postage. One of its main functions is to distribute mail to the various departments around campus.
Mail Services Student Supervisor Russ Ranard said, “The only impact I see directly on the student population is just the location. We will be continuing to provide the same mail services to the students.
“The way it will affect our operation is that the faculty mail is moving to the Forest Park Station. So there may be some delays in departments getting their mail,” Ranard said.
Ronald Anderson, USPS customer relations coordinator, explained that the current University Station post office serves two purposes. The back of the building dispatches letter carriers for certain downtown zip codes, and the front has retail and post office box services.
Since the new location is smaller and lacks parking, certain outgoing mail—including all PSU departmental mail—will now be dispatched from Forest Park Station in Northwest Portland.
This slows down campus mail because PSU Mail Services employees can no longer easily take advantage of a program called “caller service,” which enables PSU to retrieve its mail at any time the post office is open.
“Right now we can just walk over and get it,” Ranard said.
On-campus student mail is unaffected because it comes in under the 97204 and 97205 zip codes, which will be dispatched out of the new Waterfront Station post office.
The Waterfront Station office will be located inside of the newest office building in downtown Portland at 100 SW Main St., which was just completed in 2010 near the base of the Hawthorne Bridge.
“We’ll probably close University Station on a Saturday and open [Waterfront Station] on a Monday. There shouldn’t be any interruption in post office box or retail services.” Anderson said.
Anderson said it is unfortunate that students will have to travel further but mentioned that PSU students may not know that 80 percent of all USPS transactions can be done from usps.com, including arranging pick-up.
“I would really encourage people to check out the website, as busy as students are. It can save a lot of time.”
In addition, all of USPS’s free products, such as shipping boxes and envelopes, are available in the PSU Mail Services office.