Midtown Center post office closing on Jan. 12

The East Union Post Office at Midtown Center in the Central District will close when its lease expires on Saturday, Jan. 12, as 23rd and Union readies for another major redevelopment.

Lake Union Partners and the Weinstein A+U architecture firm have been planning to raze the structures at Midtown Center and construct a seven-story mixed-use development that spreads 430 residential units across three buildings for .

The post office will return once construction is finished, and LUP principal Patrick Foley has committed to helping it find a temporary space in the Central District until then. USPS spokesperson Ernie Swanson tells MPT there has not been progress on that search so far, and customers are being directed to use the Broadway post office in Capitol Hill after Jan. 12.

When construction to redevelop Midtown Center will begin remains up in the air, the East and Central Area design review boards rejecting the latest plans back in December. The issues to be resolved center primarily with the increased art programming for the entry portals and building facades and how they function and are incorporated in the development.

The closest private postal business to the Midtown post office is The Postman, which husband-wife entrepreneurs KeAnna and D’Vonne Pickett opened at MLK Jr. Way and East Union last August.

KeAnna Pickett said people started popping in after residents thought the post office would be closing in late December.

“We knew that it was closing for like two years now,” she said. “We knew, but we have people calling us now asking, ‘Hey, the post office is closing, do you do this, do you do that?’”

The Postman has hired an additional staffer, Pickett said, with another starting soon in anticipation of an increase in demand once the post office closes. The business has private mailboxes and works with UPS, FedEx and DHL.

There is also a Park Postal mail center in Madison Park and another in Leschi.