BRONX NY — The United States Postal Service has announced that it is considering selling the property it owns located at 558 Grand Concourse in the Bronx and relocating the post office operation to other space nearby.

A self-supporting government enterprise, the Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses, and relies on the sale of postage, products, and services to fund its operations.  As part of a national effort, it has been engaged in re-evaluating its facilities.  The needs of the Postal Service today call for it to look at all possible avenues that will reduce costs, consolidate operations, and increase efficiency.  In particular, advances in mail-processing technology, alternate access, declining mail volumes and route consolidations have contributed to a number of underutilized facilities. 

The property at 558 Grand Concourse was put into service in the early part of the 20th century.  It comprises roughly 175,000 square feet of interior space on several floor levels.  Many of the operations once performed there have been relocated off-site.  If this property were to sell, the post office retail operation where customers buy stamps and services and pick up their mail through a post office box would be relocated to other space nearby.  That operation requires roughly 7,300 square feet of interior space.  The location of the new post office has yet to be determined.

Information concerning USPS properties presently for sale can be found at www.uspspropertiesforsale.com.

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A self-supporting government enterprise, the U.S. Postal Service is the only delivery service that reaches every address in the nation, 151 million residences, businesses and Post Office Boxes. The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses, and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations. With 32,000 retail locations and the most frequently visited website in the federal government, usps.com, the Postal Service has annual revenue of more than $65 billion and delivers nearly 40 percent of the world’s mail. If it were a private sector company, the U.S. Postal Service would rank 35th in the 2011 Fortune 500. In 2011, the U.S. Postal Service was ranked number one in overall service performance, out of the top 20 wealthiest nations in the world, Oxford Strategic Consulting. Black Enterprise and Hispanic Business magazines ranked the Postal Service as a leader in workforce diversity. The Postal Service has been named the Most Trusted Government Agency for six years and the sixth Most Trusted Business in the nation by the Ponemon Institute.

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