Botsford Post Office Customers Detoured

By Jeff White

Customers of the Botsford Post Office will have to travel a little farther to get their mail this summer.

The facility this week was forced to relocated its mail boxes to the Newtown branch because of continuing delays in the construction of the new Botsford Post Office on the corner of South Main Street and Botsford Hill Road.

The new facility is simply not ready, said former Newtown resident John Kalas Wednesday afternoon.

 Mr Kalas, who works in Monroe, entered into an agreement with the postal service three years ago to provide a new facility to replace the 40-year-old building. He owns the 3.1 acre parcel of land where the new facility will sit when completed. The postal service went to Mr Kalas with “rather voluminous and detailed” plans for their new 2,500 square foot office, and in turn agreed to lease the building when completed from Mr Kalas over a period of 20 years.

But in the ensuing months, as Mr Kalas supplied his architects with the postal service’s plans, something went wrong. All Mr Kalas knows is that when the postal service showed up to survey the new foundation being poured, they realized it was too small. And that was just the beginning of the problems, Mr Kalas explained.

According to Mr Kalas, somewhere during the planning stages of his architects, Wiles Architects of Bridgeport, basic specifications required by the postal service were changed. There were doorways that had to be torn down or changed, there were bathrooms that were not installed meeting the proper disability codes. “Every time there was a change or something went wrong, it had an effect on the rest of the project,” Mr Kalas said.

George Wiles commented Wednesday afternoon that the drawing and planning phase was as far as his firm went with the Botsford Post Office project, stating that it was Mr Kalas’ wish that his firm not be involved in the construction phase. The post office did initially sign off on the plans submitted by Mr Wiles’ firm, he pointed out. What happened after that is anyone’s guess, he said.

“We followed [the postal service’s] specs, used their base drawings,” he explained. “We submitted [the plans] to the post office, they reviewed them, we revised them, they signed off. We’re out of the picture.”

This week’s setback is just one of many in the project’s three-year development, Mr Kalas explained. Over that period, the project has known four different engineering and architectural firms.

Mr Kalas claimed to be facing overruns nearing $200,000 in a project that should be relatively simple, as construction projects go. “It should not have been this difficult,” Mr Kalas said.

Mr Kalas said he would plan to sue Wiles Architects and Associates, in an effort to recover some of his financial overrun. But before such legal action, he said that the main focal point was to get Botsford customers back into a post office by the end of August. To that end, Mr Kalas said that the project should be completed by August 14.

Until then, Botsford residents will have to drive across town to Commerce Road to access their post office boxes. Botsford Postmaster Charles Hermanson found himself sitting in an empty office Wednesday afternoon after overseeing the facility’s move to its temporary home at Newtown’s main branch.

Mr Hermanson said that mail will still be delivered to residential mailboxes in Botsford; customers needing stamps and other postal counter services will have to find another post office. Much of the Botsford Post Office equipment will be stored somewhere in the Newtown branch’s facility.

“We apologize for the short notice,” Mr Hermanson said. He added that although post office officials looked at “other locations” as a possible temporary site for the displaced Botsford branch, the Newtown branch was the best option. The Botsford Post Office was existing on the past two months on a temporary lease granted by Connecticut Countertops, which now owns the building. Their lease ran out Friday.

“The people have always been very understanding,” Mr Hermanson said.

Mr Kalas, likewise, expressed his regret in inconveniencing post office customers. “I’m very sorry that I’ve been part of this,” he said.

“This thing has taken much too much time, much too much money, much too much inconvenience.”