East Hartford sees post office acquisition as next step to cleaning up Main Street block

Fresh from acquiring the troubled Church Corners Inn, the town of East Hartford is now looking to buy the historic post office next door to spur an economic revival along the core of Main Street.

Town officials are trying to launch negotiations with the U.S. Postal Service to acquire the partly vacant post office so they can renovate it, either as a library annex, retail space or perhaps a business incubator.

The postal service two weeks ago asked the town for an appraisal and indicated it might want to keep a Main Street presence with a long-term lease for a bit less than 20% of the space.

Mayor Michael Walsh said Tuesday that was the first time the postal service responded to many months’ worth of town inquiries, and he credited U.S. Rep. John Larson for launching communications.

Postal authorities announced in late 2019 that the building was on the market, and Larson secured $600,000 in federal aid for East Hartford to buy it. After studying the cost to renovate the 84-year-old building, Larson announced another $4 million in federal funding.

In a report outlining the town’s plan to buy it this year, Walsh wrote “the building is in deplorable condition.” Negotiations hadn’t begun, he noted, explaining “the post office doesn’t return our calls.”

That changed this month after when Jessica Martin, a real estate specialist in the post office’s administrative offices in Greensboro, N.C., told the town she’d review its proposal. Walsh sent a copy of a 2013 appraisal valuing the building at $500,000, along with a letter of interest to buy at that price.

Martin asked about a potential 10-year lease for about 1,500 square feet of the property, which would leave the town with more than 7,500 square feet.

Walsh said he would be open to negotiating that. They town’s goal is to preserve the historic building and continue the Main Street cleanup.

A 2021 report from the postal service’s inspector general acknowledged that most of the space in the building was vacant.

“The East Hartford post office provides retail and post office box services, as delivery and distribution operations previously moved to a nearby location in Hartford,” according to the report.

That report also identified the building’s historical significance.

“The building was constructed in 1939 and is recognized as the most ambitious Colonial Revival building” in the town’s Central Avenue-Center Cemetery National Register Historic District, it said.

In presenting the purchase idea to residents earlier this month, Mayor Michael Walsh said the post office would be the final property for the town to deal with on the problematic block north of Central Avenue.

This winter, East Hartford bought the four-story Church Corners Inn, relocating tenants and seeking a developer to gut and restore the building. Pipes burst after the severe cold snap in early February, and the first-floor bar has been shut down since.

The building had become notorious for fights and robberies inside and on the sidewalk nearby, panhandling was prevalent outside for years, and police answered about 500 calls a year for everything from deaths and fistfights to larcenies, overdoses and noise complaints.

“It was a problem block with aggressive panhandling. When I say aggressive, I mean it was not uncommon that when a car stopped at a light, a panhandler opened the driver’s door to talk face to face,” Walsh said Tuesday.

The town is committed to selling the Church Corners Inn to a private developer, Walsh emphasized.

“Buying it was not something we desired to do, it was something we needed to do because the private sector failed East Hartford,” he said.