Aug. 4, 2008 — It doesn't look like the U.S. Postal Service employees and customers fed up with the cramped conditions at the Ubaldina Simmons Post Office in Cruz Bay will get relief any time soon.
Although the postal service said in February 2007 that it was negotiating with Boyson Inc. owner Cheryl Boynes-Jackson for her company to build a turnkey post office near Enighed Pond, the post office construction remains in limbo.
Postal officials said they expected to sign the lease by March 2007, one and a half years ago.
Postal Service spokeswoman Monica Hand said from her New York office that the agency was waiting for the company to get the required rezoning for the property. Hand said the company was operating as Breeze Enterprises Inc. for purposes of the post office construction.
Boynes-Jackson said the company is in the midst of completing the rezoning application process at the Department of Planning and Natural Resources, which is the first step in the rezoning process.
"We're waiting on some information from the government," Boynes- Jackson said. She expects it to be completed "within the next few days."
Planning spokesman Jamal Nielsen said Boynes-Jackson hasn't submitted any paperwork.
Postal officials announced at a January 2007 meeting that it would lease 6,000 square feet of space from Boyson, tripling the size of the current post office.
The post office will be located on ground level, with a mezzanine to hold the mechanical parts of the operation.
A parking area with about 15 customer spaces will be located on the second level. A possible third level will be occupied by Boyson operations.
Entry to the parking level will be on the side street.
The Postal Service has several times made efforts to relocate the post office to more spacious quarters, but each effort fell through.
It had earlier planned to move the post office to a never-constructed vendor's plaza located where a parking lot now sits next to Nature's Nook fruit and vegetable stand in Cruz Bay.
Gov. John deJongh Jr. said in his 2007 State of the Territory address that he would work to terminate the construction contract for the "ill-conceived and undersized parking project" that also included the vendors plaza.
And before the vendor's plaza plan, the Postal Service had floated a plan to move the post office to the Guinea Grove shopping center near the Westin Resort and Villas. It appeared that construction at this site would move forward until the local government threw the idea of using the vendors plaza into the mix. Residents also complained that the Guinea Grove location was inconvenient.
St. John administrator Leona Smith said that the need for a larger St. John post office hasn't changed. "It's too small," she said.
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