West Linn Post Office Update From Mayor Jules Walters - 05/26/21
After a few years of uncertainty and hard work, I am very pleased to announce that a full-service US Post Office will be returning to West Linn. The United States Postal Service has secured a long-term lease for a 10,000 square foot facility in an existing building near Safeway in the Cascade Summit Shopping Center at 22000 Salamo Road. Our new Post Office will have all functions that the community is looking for including retail, PO boxes, package pickup, sorting, and mail carrier parking. Construction work will begin in June, and we hope the facility will be open this Fall. The City of West Linn is committed to expediting all needed permits and providing other assistance to ensure our community has a Post Office as soon as possible. The USPS has a ten-year lease with two five-year extension options included, so the Post Office will be here for a long time.
The scarcity of available land in West Linn made it very difficult to find a location capable of meeting the Postal Service’s needs for the future. The Cascade Summit site is centrally located for the entire city, is already zoned commercial, and is compatible with neighboring businesses, so it meets all of the criteria we were looking for. I think it’s a great solution for West Linn.
Several existing tenants will be relocating or closing in the shopping center, which is creating the space for the Post Office. The City will be working with all of them to provide assistance or alternatives where appropriate. This includes The Summit youth center run by Willamette Christian Church, which has been a valued part of our community for a decade. I know many kids in our community take advantage of what The Summit offers, and its departure will really underline the critical need for indoor community recreation facilities in West Linn. Addressing this need is a priority for myself and the City Council and I look forward to discussions with the community in the future about this.
The search for a permanent Post Office location has taken far longer than any of us wanted, but we have finally achieved that goal together. I want to thank everyone who has been involved along the way. First of all, West Linn’s residents and business owners. You kept this issue front and center for the USPS, the City of West Linn, and our Federal delegation. Hearing a clear message from our community ensured that we all worked on this together as a priority. Thanks also to Senator Jeff Merkley, Senator Ron Wyden, and Representative Kurt Schrader for keeping up the pressure on USPS, for intervening at key points along the way, and always advocating on behalf of West Linn residents. Thanks to City Councilors past and present and to City of West Linn staff, who have spent many hours working on solutions, looking for sites, and keeping the public informed. Finally, I want to thank John Wynton at ROIC (owners of the Cascade Summit center), realtors Brad Macomber and Raleigh Lau at Commercial Integrity NW, and staff at the USPS, who all moved very quickly to bring this solution together.
The City will keep residents and businesses up to date on progress towards re-opening as work progresses.
Thank you.