The Boston City Council held a hearing last week on the United States Post Office’s (USPS) current process to shut down the Allston Post Office.

American Postal Workers Union National Business Agent Scott Hoffman, along with many other advocates, testified at the hearing. Hoffman said that the Allston closure is no accident, and that it is part of a plan by the USPS to close as many post offices as possible so the government can make the argument for privatization of the service.

“To put things in perspective, anybody who ships stands to gain from privatization,” he said. “To put it in perspective, the Postal Service handles more in a day than UPS handles in a year. That’s how big the infrastructure is. It took 250 years to build it up so we could reach every house, every day, six days a week and service the communities. It’s a trillion-dollar industry. There are a lot of ways to divvy up that amount of money to get rich, and that’s what they’re doing. They disenfranchise the public from their public postal service so you throw your hands up and go to private industry. That’s the endgame.”

District 3 City Councilor John Fitzgerald said he was worried about the Field’s Corner Post Office, and Hoffman said he absolutely should be.

“You mention Field’s Corner, what’s next?” he said. “I live in Roslindale. We stole Allston’s, let’s go for Roslindale. They’ll pick off the city in order of communities that are disenfranchised.”

For those who aren’t in loop, the USPS shut down the Allston Post Office location at 47 Harvard Ave. back in 2019 because the building had become structurally unsound. A tree was basically growing through the building.

The USPS set up a temporary retail location, but the winter season, then coupled with the pandemic, made it little used and so the USPS shut it down.

But advocates still lobbied hard for a retail post office location. The new owner of the old location, Eden Properties, started working with the USPS to build a location for a retail post office. Eden Properties owner Noah Maslan said at the hearing last week that the company spent an unusual amount of time on design specifications specifically for the USPS.

“We started trying to understand what their needs are for the site; they explained that they wanted a retail post office location that provided post office box services, regular mail service, passport photos and that kind of stuff,” he said. “We came to an agreement with them, I believe in October of 2023 we had a letter of intent with all the business terms.”

Maslan said that was the typical process most entities enter into when negotiating a lease such as this, where the lessee has such necessary requirements as the USPS.

“Once that’s agreed upon you commence negotiating the actual lease,” he said. “They had their own specific requirements; everything from the strength of the concrete of the floor to the HVAC system that they needed, and then we proceeded to negotiate the terms of the lease, which ended in 2025. We actually started construction of the building at the end of 2025, bought out the construction contract, and it includes very specific scope items dedicated to this space to meet their requirements.”

Advertisement

Maslan said the USPS pulled out this past spring: “We were devastated.”

District 9 City Councilor Liz Breadon read the USPS letter sent out to Allston residents as part of the USPS Post Office Closure procedure. The letter read, “There was no suitable alternative quarters available for the Allston Post Office.”

“Which seems to be totally contrary to what our understanding of the situation is,” Breadon said. “You’ve been working with them very closely to build out a retail post office space to their specifications, and so this statement that no alternative quarters are available, seems to be untrue.”

“I would 100 percent agree,” Maslan said.

Maslan added that Eden still would like to have the USPS there, but warned they can’t wait around forever.

Breadon also asked Hoffman what residents can do. Hoffman said that basically, they have make as big a stink about it as possible.

“We’ve had some success on reversals and keeping locations open, but those are always with a major battle,” he said. “What they try to do is – similar to here – let a period of time go by and hope that people get used to doing without or they might have other causes to fight over those years. So they just want to let this peacefully go out. I’m not giving up total hope yet, because I think if you make enough noise, you’ll be alright. In these circumstances, I have seen reversals. Allston’s unique. It’ll be the only neighborhood in the city without a post office.”

One way to do that is to write a letter to the USPS during its comment phase, which is open until the spring. To send a letter, go to https://gvimes.link/abpstlttr