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Postal Service will build new center in Oak Creek
Published May 23, 2008 - BizTimes Daily
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The U.S. Postal Service will build a new, 820,000-square-foot mail distribution and processing center on 64 acres of vacant land at the southwest corner of College Avenue and Pennsylvania Road in Oak Creek.
The project will be announced at noon press conference today by Cobalt Partners, a Milwaukee development firm that is helping the Postal Service purchase and develop the property, said Scott Yauck, principal of the firm.
The new facility will replace the distribution center and mail processing facility at 345 W. St. Paul Ave. in downtown Milwaukee and a warehouse on South Second Street in Milwaukee, said U.S. Postal Service spokeswoman Marge Oehlke.
"We've outgrown our existing facility (in downtown Milwaukee)," Oehlke said. "We needed to seek alternative sites. This site will allow us to streamline and modernize our operations."
"The Postal Service undertook an eight- to 10-year search," Yauck said. "They were looking for a site that has proximity to downtown, the airport, the transportation system, that was convenient for employees and was large enough for their facility. And this is it."
With the site selection, about 1,900 postal employees in the mail processing center will move to Oak Creek from Milwaukee.
Yauck would not disclose the sale price of the 64-acre parcel at Pennsylvania and College, nor would he say what architect is creating designs for the Postal Service's new building. Yauck would also not discuss when the Postal Service project might break ground, nor when it might be completed.
"The first step was the identification of the site," he said. "The project will now go through the design and approval process and the schedule of transition (for the Postal Service)."
Cobalt Partners was one of several development firms that was proposing different sites for the distribution and processing center, Yauck said.
"There were competing sites in Racine and Johnson Creek," he said. "The good news is that we can retain (the Postal Service site) in Milwaukee County. It's a win for everybody."
The proposed project would house all mail processing and distribution operations for southeastern Wisconsin, according to Cobalt Partners.
However, the Postal Service will still maintain a presence in downtown Milwaukee, Oehlke said, with a vehicle maintenance facility and a retail post office. In the coming months the Postal Service will decide if those operations will remain at 345 W. St. Paul Ave., or if they will be moved to another downtown site, she said.
The Postal Service leases the space in the downtown Milwaukee building on St. Paul Avenue, which is owned by Menomonee RP LLC, whose registered agent is Jeffrey Santaga of Wauwatosa-based Hanson & Santaga S.C. Santaga could not be reached for comment. The four-story, 941,109-square-foot St. Paul Avenue building used by the Postal Service was constructed in 1967, and has an assessed value of $19.5 million, according to city records. The building is located along the north side of the Menomonee River and is next to the recently redeveloped Milwaukee Intermodal Station, which is used by Amtrak, Greyhound and other bus lines. If the Postal Service vacates the building, it could create a redevelopment opportunity for the property.
Oehlke said the Postal Service plans to abandon the parking lot along the Milwaukee River, and across the river from the Historic Third Ward, where it currently parks trucks and semi-trailers. The property's riverfront location near the Third Ward could make it a prime future development site.
