PhillyDeals: Philadelphia-area post offices targeted for possible closing

The U.S. Postal Service has many and often conflicting missions: To deliver a declining but still enormous volume of mail each year to all the hard-to-reach places in the country as people stop writing and move online, private companies cherry-pick the most profitable packages, and politicians demand that postal jobs stay in their districts.

As a symbol for both federal power and the old pre-digital world, the post office is stressed.

Its new plan to review 3,700 of the 32,000 post offices for possible closing is an attempt to cut its losses, where it can. That means shutting what used to be a focal point of neighborhoods and villages.

The 14 Philly offices on the list include clusters in West Philly: 30th Street Amtrak, West Market, West Park, Kingsessing, and Overbrook. And clusters in Northwest Philly: Roxborough, Manayunk, East Falls, East Germantown.

Several more are in a ring around Center City: the Castle, Fairmount, Spring Garden, and Schuylkill stations. Also under consideration is the little "B. Free Franklin" station for tourists at Franklin Court on Market Street.

In the suburbs, the list targets St. Davids on the Main Line and the two neighbor-villages of Salford and Woxall, in the old German farm country west of Harleysville.

In South Jersey, the list includes wealthy Harvey Cedars, as well as Long Beach. Dividing Creek, in the Delaware Bay back country south of Vineland, is also targeted.

The fact the Philly offices are clustered is a coincidence, USPS spokeswoman Cathy Yarosky told me. There are no plans to merge, for example, the Northwest Philly branches on the list into a single Man-Rox-Falls.

How did these city and suburban offices make the list? Because, for example, they "do not have the value of a minimum workload per day for the last 12 months," or they are in places where citizens "have available alternate access," or, in short, because these offices "suffer from insufficient customer demand," Yarosky said.

The Postal Service will try to replace some offices with services in private businesses: pharmacies, grocers, convenience stores, copy centers. Yarosky said prices would be the same as at government-run post offices.

Janney Montgomery Scott, the Philadelphia brokerage and investment bank owned by Penn Mutual Life Insurance Co., has leased 150,000 square feet of Brandywine Realty Trust's newly acquired redbrick Three Logan tower (formerly the Bell Atlantic building). It's a 15-year lease, to begin next year, Brandywine said.

Janney has been based in Commerce Square on Market Street, a complex that is also partly owned by Brandywine, Center City's dominant high-rise office landlord.

Gov. Corbett signed off on a $10 million taxpayer-funded matching grant to Janney to help move its headquarters earlier this year. The grant had previously been approved by the General Assembly under Gov. Ed Rendell.

Corbett's administration has signed off on the sale of the former state office building at Broad and Spring Garden Streets to builder Bart Blatstein's Tower Associates, for $21 million.

That's $4 million less than Blatstein agreed to pay the previous administration in early 2008. The state's delay in moving out, plus Blatstein's subsequent difficulties lining up financing, slowed the closing, and the weak market worked to Blatstein's advantage in striking a final price.

Utility costs totaling $390,000 remain in escrow while the state figures out what it is owed, state Department of General Services spokesman Troy A. Thompson told me. The deal generated $840,000 for the city in property-transfer tax.

Blatstein told me he plans 204 apartments in the tower, leasing for $1,200 to $1,500 a month "and higher." Work has started, as SEPTA finishes rebuilding the adjoining Broad Street subway station.

Blatstein would like to build a second 150-apartment tower and two floors of stores on the adjoining windswept plaza if he can line up tax-advantaged financing "in a few years."