CAMDEN — Sometimes, if you drive by just at the right time – which varies according to the hour of the day, and the day itself – you might catch a glimpse of a contractor’s truck, or two, on the Bay View Street parking lot of the Camden Post Office. That raises speculation: Could renovations again be underway at the historic old building, that economic and historic anchor of Camden’s downtown? Will the Post Office really reopen, as promised by the U.S. Postal Service?

The hopeful news for local postal patrons is that Spring is the target window for unlocking the doors. Even though Spring 2023 means anywhere from March 20 to June 21.

“Construction is nearing an end but, upon completion of the construction there are still some interior needs that have to be addressed (fixtures, signage, restocking, security, telecommunications, etc.),” said Stephen Doherty, Strategic Communications Specialist at the United States Postal Service in Boston, March 6.

Since mid-September, post office box holders in Camden, as well as customers used to visiting their local post office as they have for the past 100-plus years, have been forced to drive to Rockland, or nearby towns, to post and receive mail, send packages and buy stamps. The U.S. Postal Service closed Camden’s iconic post office to foot traffic September 16, saying construction work there required suspension of retail operations.

In September, the USPS had notified all box holders that they must travel to Rockland, 8.3 miles down the road, to pick up mail, or otherwise tend to business. Nearby post offices in Rockport and Lincolnville got busier, and Camden box holders, especially businesses, began making the Rockland drive part of their daily or weekly routine.

The word then was a hopeful reopening by the end of 2022.

But on Jan, 5, Doherty reported that the reopening had been pushed back, without a set date.

“As I understand it, they’re hoping to reopen the Camden office this spring, though no firm date has been announced as yet,” he said, March 6.

Postal customers are still trekking to Rockland to temporary post office boxes there, while street delivery service continues as it always has been conducted.

One postal customer had asked: "When I go away, I have to ask my neighbors to collect my mail, because the ‘hold mail’ instructions on usps.gov (aka usps.com) insist that I specify Camden as my post office. My request seems to disappear somewhere in the cybersphere. No one who delivers mail has been able to tell me how to solve this problem."

Doherty responded to that query: “Anyone having their mail held at the Camden office can specify so. They’ll just be retrieving it at the Rockland office if it’s prior to the reopening.”

He said the reopening of the Camden Post Office is not contingent on labor.

“We are currently hiring across Maine but staffing is not an issue in the reopening timeline,” he said.

The Camden Post Office was built in 1914, after years of postal service operations occupying a small office in the Camden Opera House, according to Camden’s history book, Where the Mountains Meet the Sea.

Prompting the construction of a new building was in part attributed to the D. P. Ordway Plaster Company, a medicinal enterprise that operated via direct mail.

“The volume of mail to and from this early direct-mail marketing machine required horse-drawn gains to deliver loads of envelopes twice a day at a time when the Camden Post Office was located in a little office at the opera house,” wrote the authors of Where the Mountains Meet the Sea (page 70). “The Ordway Company spent more than $40,000 on postage every year, an amazing figure that ultimately convinced the U.S. Postal Service to upgrade the Camden Post Office into a first-class operation in 1909, and to a build a new building downtown to handle the volume in 1914.”

The Post Office is included in the designation of the downtown Camden section that is on the National Register of Historic Places. The “Camden Great Fire Historic District” encompasses many buildings on Elm and Main streets.

Reach Editorial Director Lynda Clancy at lyndaclancy@penbaypilot.com; 207-706-6657