U.S. Postal Service wants to close downtown Joliet post office

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Updated: August 3, 2011 6:34PM

JOLIET — The downtown post office in Joliet may close.

City leaders scrambled Thursday to get people to a meeting on the future of the downtown facility after learning about it at the last minute.

Mayor Thomas Giarrante criticized the U.S. Postal Service’s handling of the meeting held to hear opinions of the future of the facility, which is the secondary post office in Joliet. The main post office is on the West Side on McDonough Street.

“They didn’t notify anybody,” said Giarrante, who learned of the meeting Thursday morning. The meeting was at 1 p.m.

Giarrante and other civic leaders made a case for keeping the downtown post office open.

“We’re trying to redevelop downtown,” Giarrante said. “It’s very important to have a post office there.”

Thomas Mahalik, vice president of marketing for the City Center Partnership that promotes business development downtown, said he learned of the meeting Wednesday when someone sent him a notice put out by the Postal Service.

Apparently, the Postal Service sent the notices with a survey Saturday to about 700 customers who rent postal boxes at the downtown facility.

Mahalik said the City Center Partnership is trying to distribute the survey to a wider audience so the Postal Service hears more opinions on the future of the downtown facility.

“The thing that got some people upset is the way they disseminated the information,” he said. Besides the surveys put in the postal boxes, others were available “behind the counter,” Mahalik said. “You almost had to ask for them in order to do the survey.”

Mahalik said there is still time for local people to give their opinions to postal officials. Civic leaders also are trying persuade the Postal Service to have another meeting in the neighborhood around the downtown facility. The meeting Thursday afternoon was held at the McDonough Street post office.

“We need to have a meeting on the East Side with the people who use (the downtown facility),” Giarrante said.

The Postal Service is cutting costs after losing $8.5 billion in 2010 and projecting a 2011 deficit of $6.4 billion. Reducing the number of post offices is one measure being considered.

The Postal Service also has said the agency may reduce delivery to five days a week.