FINANCIAL DISTRICT — The Peck Slip Post Office is moving to John Street as soon as this coming spring to make way for Downtown's new elementary school, the US Postal Service announced this week.
The Postal Service is close to signing a lease for the former Andrews Coffee Shop space at 116 John St., said Henry Burmeister, a manager at the Postal Service's Northeast Facilities Service Office.
As soon as the Postal Service renovates the 3,500-square-foot former cafe space — hopefully by early spring — the new John Street Post Office will open and the one on Peck Slip will close, Burmeister said.
That will allow the city to begin construction on the new 476-seat elementary school at the site of the current Peck Slip Post Office, scheduled to open in 2015.
The city has not yet announced whether it will renovate the 70,800-square-foot Peck Slip building or tear it down and start from scratch.
The Postal Service could return to Peck Slip once the new school opens, leasing a small portion of the new school's ground floor, but Burmeister said he expected the post office to remain on John Street permanently, which will save money. The Postal Service is looking to sign a 10-year lease at 116 John St., he said.
The new John Street post office will have the same hours of operation and offer the same services as the Peck Slip location, Burmeister told Community Board 1 members at a meeting Tuesday night. The mail carriers currently based at Peck Slip will move to the larger post office at 90 Church St., Burmeister said.
Board members were glad to hear that the plans for the Peck Slip school were moving forward. They urged the post office not to return to the Peck Slip building, so that the new school is able to fill the entire space.
"We're in desperate need of school seats," CB1 member Paul Hovitz said.
CB1 previously asked the city to expand the new K-5 school to 600 seats, citing the overcrowding of neighboring elementary schools.
To begin to alleviate that overcrowding, the Peck Slip school will open its first kindergarten classes in the fall of 2012 in temporary space in Tweed Courthouse, where the school will grow for three years before moving to its permanent home.
