On April 5 the United States Post Office (USPS) announced their decision to sell Northfield’s downtown Post Office building and relocate window service to the Carrier Annex on Cannon Road. A final decision will be made on June 3. The Northfield community has until then to try to reverse this decision!  A Save Our Post Office (SOPO) Task Force , led by the NDDC, has organized to keep a postal presence in downtown.

The SOPO Strategy:

• Raise public awareness about the potential post office closure
• Enlist support to lobby the USPS to keep postal services downtown
• Challenge the proposed USPS business model
• Prepare creative alternative plans to keep postal service downtown

Your Help Is Needed! Here is what you can do:

1. Sign a SOPO petition: on the Northfield News and Northfield PATCH websites, or at downtown locations including the  the Used a Bit Shop, the Northfield News, Antiques of Northfield, and Goodbye Blue Monday Coffeehouse.

2. Write a letter stating why downtown postal services matter to you, your business, and our downtown economy and community. Send a letters to either (or both):

Natalie Sorvari, Consumer Affairs Mgr
Anthony Williams, Regional District Mgr
United States Postal Service/Northland District, 100 S. 1st Street, Minneapolis, MN 55401

3. Submit a comment: Go to the USPS website and at the top of that webpage click on “Customer Service”, and then click on “Send Us an Email”. Select “problem” on the drop down menu and send a comment saying why the loss of our downtown Post Office is a problem for your household/business and/or downtown Northfield.

4. Encourage your friends/neighbors to help “Keep the Postal Service in our downtown!”

Why Save the downtown Post Office?

• A downtown postal presence is crucial to our downtown economy
• More than 260 downtown businesses/offices rely on downtown postal window service
• More than 400 households are within blocks of the downtown Post Office and rely on it
• The downtown facility draws an estimated 500 persons a day and these “feet on the street” help to support our downtown economy (and provide reliable revenue for USPS!)
• The Carrier Annex is NOT a convenient location for most Northfield residents and businesses.
• The USPS needs to economize, but the proposed move to the Carrier Annex is not a good way to achieve efficiency.  It will hurt our downtown economy and lose the USPS its customer base in Northfield.

Northfield still has a vibrant downtown economy – help us keep it that way!