The U.S. Postal Service should cancel any consideration of closing its Center City branch in downtown Winston-Salem. Customers of the branch can help by signing a petition against the move, and by visiting the branch more often.
The Center City branch is among more than 400 nationwide that the Postal Service is considering closing to save money.
Downtown can't afford to lose any business, much less one that's near the Civic Plaza project and crucial to the continuing revitalization of the central business district. There's been a post office downtown for generations. It's a feature that's more important than ever with the push to attract more businesses, residents and shoppers to come downtown. Without the Center City office, the nearest post office would be a few miles away on Patterson Avenue.
Even in this Internet age where "snail mail" is losing ground, post offices are still part of the glue that holds communities together. They are essential for keeping business flowing and are prime spots for serendipitous meetings. Who hasn't run into a friend at the post office and spent a few minutes catching up?
The Downtown Winston-Salem Partnership is circulating a petition urging the Postal Service to keep the Center City office open. More than 900 people have signed it. "We wanted to just say that we don't want just to accept that it's going to be closing," Jason Thiel, the president of the partnership, told the Journal's Laura Graff. "And so we wanted to see if we could make a difference."
There's a good chance the petition will do that, especially if many more people sign it. Carl Walton, the spokesman for the Greensboro district of the Postal Service, which covers this area, emphasized that any consideration of closing the Center City branch is only in early stages. "We'll know sometime next month if it's going to be further considered," he said.
Should the closing become a serious possibility, he said, the Postal Service will consider citizen input. "There may be things we are not considering that the community can show us and tell us about," he said. And "if the downtown area can't be served without it, that's something that we'd have to look at."
Sounds like the Postal Service can be persuaded. You can help by signing the Partnership's petition. You can find the petition at www.dwsp.org. Let's send the U.S. Postal Service a united message on its idea of possibly closing the Center City post office: Return to Sender.
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