CAMDEN — 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.

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

But on Jan, 5, Steve Doherty, Strategic Communications Specialist at the United States Postal Service in Boston, said: “While we are working diligently to reopen the Camden office as soon as possible, we do not have a reopening date set at this time.”

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.

On Sept. 9, Heather Adams, Manager of the Post Office Operations, said that, “after careful consideration, and only as a last resort, the Maine-New Hampshire-Vermont District has decided to temporarily suspend retail operation for Camden, ME 04843, due to construction of the building.”

Once construction is complete, normal retail operations were to resume, she said.

The USPS did not, however, clarify what the construction entailed. 

In September, Doherty had said that, “trying to complete the renovations while working around postal operations would not only cause the project to run well into 2023, but also creates unnecessary risks for employees in the facility.”

He said: “It was determined that a better approach would be to temporarily vacate the facility and allow uninterrupted access to the renovation crew, with the hopes that we can be back in the facility before years end. No set timetable for completion has been established at this time because the nature of these projects make such predictions unreliable. But we are confident that this approach will speed our return to a fully renovated building.”

The nature of the renovations is not cosmetic, and addresses safety concerns with the building, “so not doing the project wasn’t an option,” he said. “The question then became ‘how do we complete this project with minimal negative impact to our employees and the local community.’ The path we’ve chosen, to temporarily vacate the facility and allow 24/7 access to the work crews, best addresses that question.”

At that point, the USPS was contending with limited numbers of personnel, reflected in the 61 positions listed at usps.com/careers. Doherty said the postal service had been aggressively hiring. As of Jan. 5, there were 25 Maine USPS jobs listed at its site.

On Jan. 4, Maine Senator Susan Collins issued a statement saying that she and Tom Carper, D-Delaware, sent a letter to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, calling on the USPS, “to implement proven best practices to address the workforce shortage impacting retention and causing significant service delays.”

They wrote: “We have heard from the USPS that a national workforce shortage is the largest contributing factor to service delays. While we understand that the country is facing a workforce shortage and hiring is a challenge across many industries, the USPS has yet to implement best practices used in the private sector to attract and maintain a functional postal workforce during these challenging times,” the senators wrote. “[W]e are extremely concerned about our USPS workforce. The USPS provides critical services to seniors, small businesses, veterans, rural communities, and families who rely on the mail every day. The USPS workforce is the backbone of this institution.”

The full text of the letter can be found below or by clicking here.

In Camden, the closed post office has resulted in daily drives to Rockland for businesses that rely on regular postal communication.

Street delivery has continued, but any items that cannot be be delivered at the resident are to be picked up at the Rockland Post Office.

In 2021, a new elevator was constructed and installed in the post office.

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