Campaign to save Rolling Meadows post office fails
The Rolling Meadows post office on Kirchoff Road will close for good at the end of business Friday, even though a large group of residents and businesses have been writing letters and making phone calls over the past few weeks to try to save it.
Post office officials confirmed that the Rolling Meadows postal branch, 3266 Kirchoff Road, will close at 5 p.m. Friday, May 25, as was announced in April, because of a lease dispute between the shopping center owner and the USPS.
“The Postal Service and the owner of the Rolling Meadows building were not able to come to an agreement on lease terms,” said Arlington Heights Postmaster Elizabeth Wulf in a news release.
Residents and businesses in town had been writing letters to the post office and local legislators to explain how important the post office is to Rolling Meadows and ask for a solution, but to no avail, said Linda Ballantine, executive director of the Rolling Meadows Chamber of Commerce.
Carol Grewe, who owns the travel agency next door, helped organize residents and said she was sending 20 to 25 letters a day at one point.
Ballantine said the post office did respond with a form letter explaining the closing and the other options available to Rolling Meadows residents.
“I think they are trying to find ways to make the transition as smooth as possible without creating a lot of additional havoc,” she said.
Though the Arlington Heights Post Office at 909 W. Euclid Ave. is the nearest and the one Postal Service officials are recommending to Rolling Meadows customers, full retail services are also available at the Meijer Store at 1301 Meijer Drive in Rolling Meadows.
Other post offices and branches within five miles of the current Rolling Meadows location are those in Elk Grove Village, Hoffman Estates, Mount Prospect, Palatine, Prospect Heights and the Woodfield branch at 651 Mall Drive in Schaumburg.
All Rolling Meadows post office box deliveries without a forwarding address will be available at the Arlington Heights Post Office for pickup in general delivery until the expiration of the current post office box rental agreement.
Post office box customers at the Rolling Meadows branch will be required to change their addresses to street delivery or to a post office box at a neighboring post office.
A change of address form is available online at usps.com or from local post offices to assist customers in notifying their correspondents of the change.
Even though the letter writing campaign didn’t change the outcome for the post office, doesn’t mean it wasn’t successful, Ballantine said.
“Nothing ventured, nothing gained as they said. Although the outcome wasn’t what we ultimately hoped for, I’m so glad to see that people took the effort and time to let their feelings be known,” Ballantine said. ”It was very refreshing to see. Regardless of the outcome it still brought a lot of people together and was a positive experience to see how passionate everyone was about this.”