POSTING UP. Customers (top) waited in line at the new downtown Eau Claire post office, 225 E. Madison St., which is in a storefront previously occupied by the short-lived Charly’s Market grocery store.

It may be smaller, but the home of Eau Claire’s new post office feels familiar – and not just because of the crates of mail, the stacks of packing boxes, and the posters advertising Christmas stamps. It’s also familiar because, like all of its historic predecessors, the U.S. Postal Service’s new permanent storefront is tucked snugly into downtown Eau Claire.

The new digs at 225 E. Madison St., which opened Dec. 1, are on the lower level of a three-story mixed-use building that was built a few years ago as part of the ongoing revitalization of the North Barstow Street neighborhood. The new location replaces the post office at 126 N. Barstow St., which has served the community since 1962. That building, in turn, was built to supplant the 1909 post office at 500 S. Barstow St., now a U.S. courthouse. From the very beginning, Eau Claire’s post office has been downtown: The very first, which opened in 1851, was at the intersection of Farwell and Eau Claire streets. Then, as now, downtown was the city’s geographical heart.

The new 7,300-square-foot space is just a fraction of the size of the prior 26,600-square-foot post office, but that’s just fine, said Eau Claire Postmaster Kimberly Leith. “Smaller is better for us,” she explained. “We don’t need all that storage.” In fact, most of the Barstow Street post office was been unused for about a decade since mail processing was moved to a plant on Hogarth Street on the city’s north side. Since then, the USPS has been looking to relocate. 

At the same time, city officials had been eyeing the old post office for redevelopment. The city’s Redevelopment Authority bought the building last year, which motivated the postal service to at last find a new home. While the feds originally had their eye on the former Burger King site on Madison Street, they finally settled on leasing 225 E. Madison St., which once housed Charly’s Market, a short-lived grocery store.

“The overall consensus is they would prefer us downtown,” Leith said, referring to the sentiments of residents and city leaders alike. “From what I’ve seen in the past two months, it’s a better location. People like us to be centrally located.”

During those past two months, the post office was in temporary quarters at the Hogarth Street facility. The USPS lease on the previous building expired at the end of September, but renovations of the new location weren’t complete, forcing the temporary move.

As of Dec. 1, however, the post office was in its new home and already bustling with customers mailing packages, filing passport paperwork, and picking up their mail from the row upon row of silver post office boxes that were moved from the previous location. The opening happened just in time for the most post-iest time of the year: Nationwide, Dec. 15 is predicted to be the heaviest day for mailing cards and packages, according to the USPS. 

The relocation also happened just in time for the city’s redevelopment plans to proceed. RDA Executive Director Mike Schatz city public works officials are finalizing the design of the parking ramp, which – pending final City Council approval – will be put out to bid early next year. Schatz expects demolition of the old post office to occur before spring, when construction work on the ramp could begin.