Allston Post Office Slated to Begin Construction in 2025

Five years after Allston’s only post office closed, the neighborhood may still be years away from seeing its replacement open — with construction slated to begin mid-2025 at the earliest, according to the developer.

Noah Maslan, principal at the developer Eden Properties, said in an interview with The Crimson this week that they were still finalizing its lease agreement with USPS this month. The six-story building will be built on the site of the old post office, which is slated to be demolished.

The project received approval in December from the Boston Planning Department — then called the Boston Planning and Development Agency — and will include up to 170 residential units, housing the new post office on the ground floor.

The timeline means residents already frustrated with the neighborhood’s missing post office will be left trekking to Brighton to ship off their packages amid a wider city-wide outcry over deficient mail services.

The Boston City Council held a hearing earlier in October over concerns about chronic mail delays throughout the city. Councilors and postal workers attributed the problems to staffing issues at the hearing.

“They do an exceptional job but they are terribly overworked, understaffed and we need to make major significant changes,” Councilor Edward M. “Ed” Flynn said.

A USPS representative failed to attend the hearing, however, leaving it unclear how soon any improvements to mail service would come. Shortly after the hearing, the City Council subpoenaed Boston Postmaster Joshua Balcunas to appear at another hearing in November.

“In the absence of management attending, we weren’t able to get right to their answers,” Allston-Brighton’s City Councilor Elizabeth A. “Liz” Breadon said.

At the meeting, Allston Civic Association President Anthony P. D’Isidoro said that the relocation of P.O. boxes to the Brighton office was a problem for vulnerable residents for whom navigating the city may be more difficult, like seniors.

“It is a social injustice, given our migrant population, our immigrant population, our seniors, people with disabilities, that they have to move their P.O. box up to Brighton, which is overused right now as well,” he said. “We need bold leadership.”

The Massachusetts Congressional also recently sent a letter to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, rebuking the mail service’s local management for the multiple post office closures in the area and lost mail.

In 2019, USPS announced the post office would be “temporarily closed” to repair structural damage to the building.

USPS spokesperson Stephen N. Doherty said that initial efforts to repair the building then became bogged down with insurance and contractor difficulties, although he did not specify how the agency decided to abandon the project altogether.

Alex Cornacchini, executive director of nonprofit Allston Village Main Streets accused the postal service of classifying the Allston office as “temporarily closed” to avoid the procedure associated with a permanent closure, which requires going through a public engagement process.

“The post office can kind of get away with just not really having a plan to reopen, but without officially saying that this post office is actually closed,” Cornacchini said.

Doherty, the USPS spokesperson, wrote that “since we lease many of our facilities, we sometimes encounter circumstances beyond our control.”

“In this case the building was damaged, this required us to relocate operations while the landlord facilitated repairs,” he wrote. “We couldn’t just rent another space because, if the repairs were made and we were able to resume operations in a couple of weeks, we were still obligated to that lease. When insurance companies and contractors are involved, things can drag out.”

As residents await construction, the abandoned office remains a source of confusion.

Kimberly Wilkins, who owns a business next to the site of the old post office, said she still sees people come to the site thinking it is open.

“A lot of people come to look still now even though it’s been, I want to say four or five years that the post office has been closed,” Wilkins said.

As residents wait for the closed office’s replacement to finally arrive, D’Isidoro said he was confident the developer would deliver for the neighborhood.

“I’ve worked with these guys at Eden Properties before, so I’ve put my trust in them, that things are moving along,” he said.