The new student center will be missing a feature familiar: a U.S. Post Office.
According to Vice President for Business and Administration Bob Brown, both school and Postal Service officials determined it was not economically feasible to have a USPS center in the facility.
“It was really a mutual decision,” Brown said. “There isn’t enough business and sales generated out of the post office station here on campus for the U.S. Postal Service to invest in the equipment and continue to staff the post office. The university was not in a apposition to subsidize the post office.”
Brown said university officials were exploring a number of possible private companies that could provide shipping and rental mailbox space.
“We’re not to the stage where we have asked them to officially express interest,” Brown said, “but a number of them seem interested.”
There will be mail services when the new student center opens, Brown said.
“We’re not going to open that and not have some way for students who rely on the campus mailbox … to not have something,” Brown said.
According to Brown, Jimmy Weatherford, the postmaster for Commerce, and his supervisor informed university officials the USPS could not afford to fund the build-out of a new post office.
The campus post office has been in operation since the early 1970s, according to Rick Miller, director of the Sam Rayburn Memorial Student Center.
“I was a student here in the ’70s and they had it,” Miller said. “That part of the building opened up in ’69.”
Currently, students on campus have mail delivered to them by resident assistants, who receive it from a USPS carrier, or have a private post office box, which they rent.
For students with post office boxes, costs could increase.
The campus post office rents boxes for $25 for a six-month lease. Private companies, such as Eagle Postal in Southlake or Mail Plus in Rowlett range in price from $37 for six months plus a $10 deposit to $78 for six months plus a $5 deposit.
The university charges the post office $1 a year in rent. Although he did not know the amount quoted for a location in the future facility, Brown said the rent at the new center did not factor into the negotiations.
McKinney Boyd, a USPS spokesperson, initially said Postal Service officials were waiting to make a decision on being in the new building.
“Once it’s built we still need to go into some kind of discussion with the administrators at Texas A&M although we have not gone into any kind of discussions now as for as a build-out of a postal presence there.”
When told University officials stated the local Postal Service had said it would not be economically feasible for them to be in the complex, Boyd agreed.
“At this time that is our official position,” Boyd said. “But at the same time, I think that we can still look at things. We’re talking about 18 months down the road and a number of factors can change. But at the same time, if that’s what the local postmaster had said – and that’s primarily what the position of the corporate office of the US Postal Service – then that’s our position at this time.
“We are always open to any kind of discussion in the future pertaining to the built-out of this future postal center.”
Boyd said the current post office had not generated revenue in “quite some time.”