DUMBO is finally asserting its mail power.
The neighborhood down under the Manhattan Bridge overpass — famous for its small craft manufacturers, artists, media companies and light industries (and the packages they create) — will get its first post office.
And the even better news? No postal workers to be disgruntled!
In the next few weeks, the United States Postal Service will open an unmanned “automated postal center” on Front Street between Washington and Adams, a facility that features electronic equipment for self-service mailing and stamp buying.
This may not sound like much, but the center will replace long treks to the unpopular main post office on Cadman Plaza and an exhaust-belching mobile post office that makes sporadic visits to Front Street.
In other words, this is a red letter day in DUMBO.
“It’s a major step in building this community,” said Kate Kerrigan of the DUMBO Improvement District, which sought such a center for three years.
Andrea Burroughs, a spokeswoman for the postal service, said that the much-maligned mail agency created the facility because “of the tremendous [population] growth in DUMBO.
Postal service has been talked about for years. The Brooklyn Paper reported in July, 2007, that the Postal Service had taken out an ad seeking a lease for a 1,000-square-foot storefront. The story also reported that the center “could open by next year.”
That turned out to be optimistic.
