Long Beach post office reopens

Facility operating on a limited basis

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More than a month after Hurricane Sandy brought the Long Beach post office’s operations in the city to a standstill, the facility reopened its doors on Monday, albeit on a limited basis.

The post office has been closed since Oct. 31, after the building, at 101. E. Park Ave., sustained significant flood damage. Residents were instructed to pick up their mail at the Garden City post office in the weeks following the storm, though deliveries along most routes throughout the city were restored.

Maureen Marion, a regional spokeswoman for the post office, said that the Long Beach post office continues to experience limitations to its Internet and phone capabilities that have restricted a number of postal services.

“Some transactions have to be done with Internet access, so it leaves us unable to be fully operational," Marion said. "What the average person uses on a regular basis is OK.”

That includes full services for things such as P.O. boxes, she said, but explained that at currently, mailing items such as holiday packages to troops serving overseas are not available at the Long Beach location. Marion instructed residents to visit post office locations in Oceanside, Rockville Centre and Lynbrook for full retail services.

“That’s an illustration of the sort of thing we wouldn’t be able to do,” Marion said. “But if you came in to buy stamps, that we can do.”

“It's pick up service only — no window service,” resident Angela Overton Skudin said on Facebook.

The Long Beach post office provides services for approximately 16,700 addresses in the city, Marion said, and has 55 employees. She added that the storm caused electrical and structural damage to the building and that repairs are ongoing, explaining that it was too early to determine when the post office would begin providing full services.

“We anticipate that we will be cleaning for awhile,” she said. “We have been trying to do service in areas that allow us to get in — right now, there are about 580 deliveries that we still could not do, and that’s a significant improvement from the first week.”

Marion said that residents who have not received their mail may pick it up at the post office. For residents who remain displaced and unable to return to Long Beach, she recommended that they consider filling out a temporary change of address form, which she said can be done online or at a local post office.

The post office is open from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on weekdays this week and from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday.