Sally Burnette enjoys driving to the Ardmore Station post office in her pickup with her dog, Twinkie, to drop off packages.
“I got laid off, so I’m selling stuff on eBay,” said Burnette, who lives close by. “So that’s a highlight of my day.”
Her ride is about to get a bit longer.
The U.S. Postal Service will close Ardmore Station by Dec. 31.
“That building is getting torn down,” said Carl Walton, a spokesman for the postal service’s Greensboro district, which includes Winston-Salem. “So we have no choice. We’re going to have to get out of there.”
Walton said customers will be told the definite closing date as soon as it’s known.
The postal service leases the building at 229 Miller Street from Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, which bought it in 2006.
Lisa Davanzo, a spokeswoman for Wake Forest Baptist, said that the postal service wanted to rent the space for another five years when its lease ends Dec. 31, but the medical center proposed a much shorter term.
“They actually did not want to re-sign,” Davanzo said of the postal service. “So they actually made the decision, not us.”
Wake Forest Baptist plans to put a $38.7 million ambulatory surgery center on the site. The proposed 72,300-square-foot center would consist of seven new operating rooms and one transferred from N.C. Baptist Hospital.
It applied with the N.C. Division of Health Service Regulation in February for a certificate of need. The state approved the hospital’s plans, but Novant Health recently appealed that decision.
Because of the appeal, it now could be years before Wake Forest Baptist can begin work on the center, Davanzo said.
Post-office boxes at Ardmore Station will be moved to the post office in downtown Winston-Salem at 200 Town Run Lane, between Second and Third streets.
Walton said customers will be told in advance so that they can make arrangements for the move.
“Obviously, there will not be an extra charge or anything like that to them,” Walton said.
Several customers
talked about how convenient the post office is for them.
Patricia Christian just found out about the closing yesterday. She visits the location at least once a week and said it’s easier to get to than the one at Hanes Mall.
“I’m disappointed because I don’t live far from here,” Christian said.
Customers with post-office boxes had mixed feelings. Jim Welch, who lives about 10 miles away, said he wouldn’t mind going downtown.
But Briana Caza said she and her husband will probably switch post offices.
“I don’t think we want to drive downtown,” she said.
At its annual meeting last night at Ardmore Methodist Church, the Ardmore Neighborhood Association planned to give people a chance to sign a petition asking that the post office be kept open and to hear a presentation from a representative of Wake Forest Baptist about its plans for the post-office site.
Julie Magness, a member of the association, said traffic makes it hard to get to some post offices in the city, including the ones on Healy Drive and Patterson Avenue.
Magness said she is concerned that the Town Run post office doesn’t have enough convenient parking and that it may not have enough post-office boxes to accommodate all the customers who have them at Ardmore Station.
She said that losing just one local post office is going to be hard.
“I can manage to buy stamps other ways,” Magness said. “You can buy postage online and things like that, but it doesn’t work for the older population. It really doesn’t work for the people who are not into the computer age yet.”
fdaniel@wsjournal.com
727-7366
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