Growing city to get special delivery
Columbia County schools are not the only ones using portable buildings.
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Ann Washington, a window distribution clerk at the Grovetown post office, sorts mail. A trailer is going to be installed at the location to relieve overcrowding caused by recent growth in the city.
Photo by Jim Blaylock
The population of Grovetown and rural areas surrounding the city is exploding, officials say. As a result, the Grovetown post office will soon be getting a portable building to help relieve the need for space until a new post office can be built, said Michael Partlow, the post office supervisor of Customer Services.
"The rural (routes) are jumping by leaps and bounds," Partlow said of the nine rural routes that cover most of the area south of Columbia Road from Louisville and Old Louisville roads to South Belair Road.
Partlow said he expects the trailer will be used for nine rural carriers to sort mail. It is expected to arrive at the post office, 101 Fornum Drive, within the next two weeks.
"We don't have adequate parking, so they (the U.S. Postal Service's Southeast District) are going to expand our parking lot to allow for that," Partlow said. "... They are scheduled to come in and rip up part of our parking lot and put in a new one probably within the next six months."
The areas inside and outside of the city are growing at such a fast rate, Partlow said, that it is often difficult to keep up.
"It's a day-to-day challenge," he said, adding that space inside the building is "pretty tight.''
Louie Boedecker, a mail carrier for the Grovetown post office, sorts the mail. More than 60 houses have been added to his route in the past three months because of population growth in the Grovetown area.
Photo by Jim Blaylock
The nine rural routes average 575 to 615 deliveries a day, and the three city routes, including an auxiliary route, average about 1,100 deliveries a day, Partlow said.
The auxiliary route is rapidly growing, Partlow said, adding that it has had 62 new deliveries in the past 40 days.
The Martinez post office delivery area, which borders Grovetown's along South Belair Road, averages 500 deliveries a day on 30 city routes and six rural routes, according to a Martinez post office employee.
"I've heard that they are talking about finding another place and building a bigger post office because they are squeezed into that area and they have so (many) more (residents) than they had when that first office was first built," Grovetown Mayor Dennis Trudeau said.
Partlow said the South District office evaluates post office buildings in need of expansion or replacement at the beginning of each fiscal year, which begins in October.
"We have other stations in the South Georgia District that have worse growth than we do and are in more desperate need," Partlow said. "... We're No. 5 on the list (for a replacement building)."
It could be years before the city is granted a new and larger post office, Partlow said, because the location in the most need gets a new building first.
"We're on the schedule for one, but we just don't know when we'll get it," Partlow said.