New Post Office Approved for Fayetteville

Construction of a new post office for north Fayetteville was approved in April by a U.S. Postal Service regional committee in Dallas.

Fayetteville Postmaster Linda Patrick says a postal service representative from Little Rock will now meet with Mayor Fred Hanna to try to determine the best location for the new post office.

The new post office, a branch of Fayetteville’s main post office on Dickson Street, should be completed in one to two years, says Patrick.

Patrick says the new 28,000-SF post office will be located somewhere within a square bordered by the Northwest Arkansas Mall to the north, Township Road to the south, Crossover Road to the east and Gregg Avenue to the west.

The new facility will have a retail window and 2,000 post office boxes. The building will be constructed according to a standard blueprint from the federal government.

The new post office will help relieve crowded working conditions for the 54 carriers who work at the carrier annex on South School Avenue, says Patrick. The new facility will serve as a base for carriers who deliver mail to the 72703 ZIP code in the northern part of the city. Currently, those carriers work from the carrier annex with mail carriers for Fayetteville’s 72701 and 72704 ZIP codes.

Patrick, who took over as postmaster in November 1996, says the new facility will be more convenient for businesses and individuals in the rapidly growing area of north Fayetteville.

Fayetteville, the most populous city in Northwest Arkansas with 52,976 residents, currently has one post office, compared with two in Springdale (population 37,700).

Patrick notes, however, that Fayetteville also has contract postal stations at the University of Arkansas and in the Dillon’s supermarket at 1901 E. Mission Blvd., but those aren’t operated by post office employees.

The new post office will be about half the size of the 42,000-SF main post office at Dickson Street and St. Charles Avenue, which has served the city since postal services were moved from the downtown square in the 1960s. The Dickson Street post office has 2,600 boxes, which are usually all rented.

A 72,000-SF, $4.4 million mail distribution center that opened last July in Fayetteville serves as a routing center for all mail going into or out of Northwest Arkansas. Previously, the sorting was done at the Dickson Street post office in Fayetteville.