Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 28, 1993 TAG: 9304280055
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RON BROWN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Postal officials say they will start shopping around for a new site downtown within 30 days.
Roanoke Postmaster Billy W. Martin confirmed the move in a letter to postal patrons.
"This will not affect service," Martin said.
Most postal patrons will keep their same box numbers. Agencies in the Poff Building will be assigned suite numbers and will be served by a smaller in-house mail room, which will be staffed by a part-time postal clerk.
The Poff Building post office will have to be moved by February.
"We're not too happy about it," said Harold Driscoll, a delivery supervisory at the facility. "We don't think it serves the best interest of the people."
Driscoll said it will be difficult for the postal service to find another facility as centrally located as the Poff Building. Between 6,500 and 7,000 postal patrons are served by the post office.
Driscoll said the post office was given an eviction notice in December and was given a year to move. That deadline later was extended to February.
Late last year, the U.S. General Services Administration - the government's real estate agent - confirmed that the Poff Building would undergo a $3 million renovation.
The project, tentatively scheduled to start in September, will result in five agencies leaving the 17-year-old structure. Other agencies moving are the U.S. attorney's office, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the U.S. Forest Service, the Secret Service and the Office of Hearing and Appeals for Social Security.
The federal government last spring started shopping for 65,000 square feet of new office space to house those agencies.
The cornerstone of the renovation will be a new 2,800-square-foot courtroom on the first floor and judge's chambers and jury rooms to accompany it. The post office is on the first floor.
Officials say a boom in federal criminal cases and an increase in home loans by the Department of Veterans Affairs is causing the space crunch.
Thirty-five federal agencies fill the 13 floors of the the Poff Building, which was occupied on Dec. 8, 1975. As of December 1991, the General Services Administration said, 729 people worked in the building.
by CNB