Redondo Post Office Closing

The closure of the Redondo USPS retail location has been postponed to March 16, following United States Postal Service infrastructure problems. The Long Beach Planning Commission has approved to rezone the property that is being vacated for industrial use.

 Patrons will now have until Friday, March 16 to pick up mail, after which the 2300 Redondo Ave. retail center will close permanently. All mail will be routed within a mile to the new Signal Hill station on 2371 Grand Ave., which opens at 6:00 a.m. on March 19. The new station will offer retail services such as stamp sales in addition to a Passport Center.

The original closure was scheduled for March 5, but the USPS chose hold back the date. One USPS official said that “The move was originally scheduled to occur on March 5th but due to some infrastructure issues USPS wanted to address before vacating the old side, the date was pushed back to March 19th.”

The Redondo Avenue location previously housed a major mail processing center which was consolidated in 2009; all outgoing mail operations were moved to Santa Ana. The center was closed in 2013, but the retail aspects were not impacted by that closure. The public agency announced its decision to sell the facility and relocate the postal office altogether in 2015.

These closures follow a national USPS trend. National mail volumes decreased by roughly 1 billion parcels from the 2016 to 2017 fiscal years. The USPS also reports that its total revenue dropped about $1.8 billion from 2016 to 2017.

Local developer Pacific Industrial purchased the closing Redondo Avenue USPS property in February of this year and plans to develop a “light” industrial manufacturing center called Pacific Edge. The Long Beach Planning Commission approved the developer’s site plan on Feb. 15, which will encompass the 19-acre site. The plan features three, one-story buildings totaling 424,050 in square footage in addition to 638 parking spaces.

The developer will also add 135-foot deep-truck ports for light trucking usage. It did stress to the planning commission that those ports will not support heavy truck usage, therefore minimizing impact to the area. Following the company’s recommendation, the commission approved to rezone the land parcel from institutional to industrial use.

Six local residents made public comments at the Feb. 15 planner’s meeting, citing concerns over traffic.

A mitigated negative declaration was submitted to the planning commission, which found that traffic could be significantly impacted by the project throughout its construction and after its completion. The effects could be reduced to less-than-significant levels if traffic signal timings are changed accordingly.

The Signal Hill station on Grand will operate its lobby from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday. The retail window will be open from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. There is no final construction date set for the Pacific Edge project.

vanessa@beachcomber.news