Negotiators appear close to completing a deal that could bring the Bolinas Post Office back to town, ending nearly two years of frustration for a community that has been campaigning fervently for its return.
“Negotiations over some minor details continue, but general consensus seems to have been reached,” said E. Patrick Morris, an attorney for Gregg Welsh, the owner of the Waterhouse Building on Brighton Avenue, where the post office had been operating for more than half a century.
The post office closed on March 3, 2023, after efforts to renegotiate a lease broke down due to a dispute about asbestos tiles installed by the postal service.
Ever since then, community members have been schlepping alternately to Stinson Beach and Olema to get their mail, requiring a roundtrip of up to 50 minutes. The pickup locations have changed four times due to flooding at the Olema Post Office, most recently over Christmas, when customers say some packages were stashed outside and damaged by rain after being transferred to Stinson Beach.
“I think this long, painful odyssey is close to an end,” said Rep. Jared Huffman, who has been lobbying postal officials to reopen the Bolinas facility. “I hope that we are finally bringing this thing in for a landing.”
Mr. Welsh, who lives in Santa Barbara, signed a proposed lease last March, but the postal service required several inspections and an environmental review before responding 10 months later with a counterproposal. Community advocates who have been leading the campaign to bring back the post office were beginning to lose hope.
But Mr. Welsh finally received a lease from the U.S.P.S. in early January, and the two sides continued negotiating this week to iron out final details.
“The post office sending a lease was a major step,” said Kent Khtikian, a Bolinas attorney who helped negotiate the lease signed in March. “All of the conditions that the postal service had articulated for being willing to re-enter a lease for that space have been satisfied. I believe the parties are negotiating in good faith and making every effort to conclude this.”
Dalton Reisig, who is negotiating on behalf of the postal service, declined to provide specifics but expressed optimism that a deal could be reached soon.
“We’re hoping to get something done in the near future,” he said. “I know it’s a very touchy issue in town, and we’d like to get something ready to go as soon as possible.”
Residents have been campaigning for the return of the post office in their grassroots and artful Bolinas ways, beseeching postal service officials with cards, handwritten letters, poems and drawings. A sign at the entrance to town counts the days since the post office shuttered, which totaled 698 as of Thursday.
Their plight has resulted in news articles in the San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Times, as well as coverage on a San Francisco television station.
In the aftermath of the shuttering, residents spent months devising a detailed plan to open a temporary post office on the Big Mesa until a permanent location could be found in a village where rental property is scarce and expensive.
Postal officials seemed interested at first, visiting the site with residents and reviewing their proposal. But after months of suspense and scant communication, they rebuffed the idea.
Unwilling to give up, a team of community members met with Mr. Welsh to see if he might be interested in trying to resuscitate the previous lease negotiations for the downtown location.
That effort appeared to be gaining traction last year, when Mr. Welsh signed a proposed five-year lease with essentially the same financial terms as the previous lease. Last summer, postal service architects inspected the property and commissioned an environmental inspection that met U.S.P.S. requirements.
But months of silence ensued, compounding frustrations for residents, who have been redirected from one location to another over the last two years, moving from Bolinas to Olema to Stinson Beach to Olema and back to Stinson Beach again.
The most recent move came just before Christmas, when the Olema location was inundated. Located in a floodplain, it floods virtually every year during the rainy season.
With little notice, residents were instructed to pick up their packages in Stinson Beach, where some were stacked outside on tables in the rain, according to John Borg, who has helped lead the campaign to bring back the post office.
“People were going to the post office in boots to get their mail, wading through water, and some of them couldn’t go at all,” he said. “The move to Stinson was fumbled. It was very last-minute, and they couldn’t handle the number of packages they received. They knew it was going to flood, right during the busiest season of the year.”
Postal officials should have been prepared, Mr. Borg said.
Reopening the post office in town would be a sweet victory for residents, many of whom receive prescriptions and checks in the mail.
They expected their ordeal to be over long ago, only to be repeatedly disappointed.
“This has been frustrating, if not absolutely maddening,” Rep. Huffman said. “I understand the community’s frustrations. I share them.”
Mr. Khitikian has voiced optimism about the return of the post office in the past, only to see his hopes dashed. But this time feels different.
“All the signs are really positive right now,” he said. “It’s really moving along.”