US Postal Service Dedicates New Philadelphia Mail-Processing Center

U.S. Postal Service officials yesterday dedicated their new Philadelphia Processing and Distribution Center, touting it as the first of a new generation of mail centers that will cut costs and improve service.

The sprawling center, with more floor space than three football fields, will not be finished until late next year. So dignitaries had to don hard hats and raise their voices to be heard over the din of 1,200 construction workers and their machines.

The $300 million center will be the first urban processing facility built for modern, computer-aided distribution networks, said S. David Fineman, the Philadelphia attorney who chairs the USPS board of governors.

It will replace the processing and distribution portion of the city’s Main Post Office complex that was built in 1935 in the heyday of railroads. The complex is adjacent to 30th Street Station, and conveyor belts beneath passenger platforms once carried sacks of mail under Market Street to and from passenger trains that did the lion’s share of mail hauling until jet airplanes and interstate highways changed transportation during 1960s.

“This center will become the model that will be used in Chicago, Los Angeles and all over the United States,” Fineman said at the dedication.

The center is a 7500 Lindbergh Blvd, just east of Island Avenue, a short distance from Interstate 95 in the city’s Eastwick neighborhood.

It also overlooks… The employee cafeteria will overlook the nearby Philadelphia International Airport, said Richard J. Farley, a principal of Kling, the architectural and engineering firm that designed the 910,000-square-foot center.

The focus for the 30 Kling architects was the flow of work and robotic machines that will gather, sort, bundle and direct 8 million pieces of mail daily, beginning early in 2006.

But there also will be human touches. For example, there will be a two-story glass wall at the east end, offering a panoramic view of the city skyline. “People riding down the escalator at the end of their shifts at 4 or 5 in the morning will get a little lift in their life,” Farley said.

For a time there was talk of building the center in the suburbs, but then-Mayor Edward G. Rendell and others won that fight to keep it in the city, Fineman said.

“Losing the wage taxes from the nearly 4,000 good-paying jobs at the center would have been a terrible burden on the city,” he added.

This new center will remove a huge industrial operation, with scores of big trucks arriving and departing daily, from the edge of University City. Architects and postal officials included Eastwick neighbors of the new facility in the planning. “We want the center to be a good neighbor,” Farley said.

The University of Pennsylvania has purchased the 24-acre Market Street site for an estimated $50.6 million. Planning is in the early stages on how to redevelop the area and create a stronger, more pedestrian-friendly link to Center City.

The ornate front part of the main building, where the public buys stamps, collects mail from post office boxes and mails packages, will remain in operation, under a long-term lease.