A Full-Service Post Office Finally Reopens in Montpelier 

The U.S. Postal Service has reopened a post office at 89 Main Street in Vermont’s capital city, 15 months after the original location was closed by a devastating flood.

The announcement came on Monday, not a moment too soon for Montpelier residents and local leaders who had pleaded for months with Vermont’s congressional delegation to help get the postal service moving.

“Hooray and please welcome back our intrepid post office clerks to serving the public in downtown Montpelier!” one person responded to the news on Facebook.
The postal service installed post office boxes at the new location over the summer. On Monday, it started offering mail and package shipping, postage sales, and mailing supplies, the postal service said in a statement.

"We thank our loyal customers for their patience as we underwent the process of seeking out a new location after last year's flooding," the statement said. A grand reopening is scheduled for Saturday, October 12.

Many people's patience with the situation expired months ago.

"There was an opportunity for the postal service to show real leadership in helping a community to recover from a disaster. Instead they made it harder," said Ben Doyle, chair of the Montpelier Commission for Recovery and Resilience, which formed after the flood of July 2023 caused millions of dollars' worth of damage to homes and businesses.

Doyle has been rallying residents lately to contact Postmaster General Louis DeJoy directly with their complaints about the post office situation.

“Our community can now focus on other aspects of the recovery that are frankly more important," Doyle said on Monday. "But it’s just unfortunate that it took more than 450 days to get here."

The 2023 flood closed several businesses, emptying Montpelier’s streets in mid-summer, one of the busiest times of year. And since the pandemic, merchants have been contending with a drop in daytime visitor traffic as office workers who used to occupy downtown buildings have chosen to work at home.

Doyle and others hope the return of the post office will help.

“The post office is a big draw for a lot of people,” said Kelly Sullivan, who owns Splash Naturals, a large natural body products shop that also sells clothing and accessories on Main Street.
Sullivan’s been a downtown merchant for 20 years, and she used to rely on the post office to drop off packages for mail orders. After it closed, she took the items to the post office near her home in Worcester.

“But they have very unusual hours, and they have been a little understaffed at times, so it’s challenging getting product out to customers in a timely way,” Sullivan said.

During the 15 months that the downtown post office was closed, the postal service set up limited facilities at the campus of the former Vermont College of Fine Arts; on Route 302 near downtown; and at the Berlin mall outside the city.

Disgruntled customers who were accustomed to walking to the roomy, well-lit Montpelier Post Office on State Street delivered scathing critiques on social media, describing dirty, distant and disorganized facilities with poor signage and, in some cases, no heat. Staff who were working in those makeshift conditions were apologetic and had no information, either, about when the city would get a full-service post office again.

Vermont’s congressional delegation held a rally in January to call for the return of the post office and sent a letter dated October 1 that demanded to know a reopening date.

Last week, U.S. Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) joined postal employees, union members and community members at another rally in Montpelier.

“It’s outrageous and unacceptable by any measure — including USPS’ own standards of restoring service after a disaster,” Welch said then of the prolonged closure.

Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark joined in on October 2, saying her office “is cognizant of the legal obligations on the Postal Service when it wishes to relocate, close, to consolidate a post office, whether temporarily as a result of a natural disaster like our July 2023 flood, or permanently.”