Oct. 23, 2001 – The Cruz Bay block that runs from the post office through the Morris deCastro Clinic will soon be seeing some changes.
For starters, the U.S. Postal Service plans to open up the west wall of its building to accommodate a large trailer which will be attached to expand the work space. Postmaster Louis Jackson said the approach is similar to the process of making house trailers into permanent structures. He had no date for construction to start.
The post office now uses a stand-alone trailer in its small parking lot adjacent to the building to distribute packages. The main facility, which was enlarged in the early 1990s, has been short of space since soon after that because of the increasing volume of mail processed and distributed on St. John.
Various plans to expand the post office have been advanced over the last several years. The most recent one called for extending the existing building into the small park located between the existing structure and the old Tourism office. This met with protests from residents who feared the expansion would harm the park's existing trees, although officials said the trees would be preserved in a courtyard, rather than be destroyed. This plan, however, appears to have been scrapped.
The Tourism office, which had been located in a cottage in the small park, was moved in the spring to a waterfront site at the front of the Morris deCastro Clinic building. St. John Administrator Julien Harley said the U.S. Postal Service had planned to use the cottage to distribute packages. But "it was too small," Jackson said.
Harley said the Tourism office will return to its former location in the cottage by December. But first, he said, the building needs refurbishment, including painting and repairs to the air conditioning and the restroom.
Several years ago, Postal Service authorities held a series of public meetings to discuss plans for building a new post office facility outside of the immediate downtown Cruz Bay area. Proposed locations were considered and rejected. There does not appear to have been any recent action on putting the plan into effect.
Postmaster Louis Jackson referred questions on the matter to Tom Pino, the Postal Service official in charge of facility expansion. Pino could not be reached for comment.
