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Officials celebrate post-office opening at store in Liberty
Photo
From left, Liberty Township Administrator Pat Ungaro, Trustee Jodi Stoyak, U.S. Postal Service Retail Specialist Fran Dalpiaz, Giant Eagle Vice President of Operations Bob Graff , Trustee Chairman Stan Nudell and Store Director Jeff Saluga stand before the Giant Eagle post office during a Tuesday ribbon-cutting ceremony. It is the first post office in Liberty in five years.
Liberty
After closing the township’s only post office in 2007, township trustees, management at Liberty’s Giant Eagle and U.S. Postal Service representatives had a ribbon-cutting ceremony Tuesday at the supermarket’s new contractual post office.
Located at 4700 Belmont Ave., the post office offers full delivery and retail service but will not have post- office boxes.
The opening comes as the USPS is looking to return to profitability after years of deficits and the announcement of 1,365 post office closures, including one on Youngstown’s North Side at 1716 Guadalupe Ave.
“It’s going well so far,” said Bob Graff, the vice president of operations at the Giant Eagle.
He said the supermarket actually started postal service March 24.
“We started out slow to get all the team members comfortable,” Graff said. “But we’re ready now.”
The post office is operated by Giant Eagle employees who received up to 36 hours of training and will be able to call the Youngstown post office for questions, said Fran Dalpiaz, a USPS retail specialist out of Cleveland.
The Youngstown post office will be picking up mail at Giant Eagle.
Like any contractual post office, it saves USPS money because the location is staffed by Giant Eagle employees and it pays a monthly fee to Giant Eagle for the space, though David Van Allen, a USPS spokesman, would not say how much the monthly fee is or how much USPS is saving.
There are more than 70,000 contractual sites throughout the country that produced more than $600 million in revenue for USPS in 2011.
Dalpiaz said this is the fourth retail store this year in Northeast Ohio that has opened a contractual post office, which she said is outpacing the numbers that have opened in years past.
“This helps save us considerably in costs while offering a one-stop shopping experience,” Van Allen said.
For chairman of the township trustees Stan Nudell, the process of getting a post office in the township began two years ago when he was first elected into office.
He convinced USPS a year ago to come to Liberty and perform a study on whether the township needed a post office. After determining that Liberty did need one, USPS sent out notices requesting bids for a location and approved the Giant Eagle location in January. “Having a post office back in Liberty is huge,” Nudell said. “Liberty is on the move.”