Bridge Square Post Office Up for Sale

Northfield’s downtown post office officially is up for sale.

The historic is one of 77 properties listed as on the market on the United States Postal Service’s properties-for-sale website.

Asking price for the property—the 9,708 square-foot building that was built in 1936 and a half-acre lot with 15 parking spaces—is $845,000.

The online for-sale ad—which calls the post office an “architecturally distinct building”—says the Bridge Square property “represents a unique opportunity to purchase a unique and beautiful former U.S. Postal Service facility.”

Chris Gliedman with CBRE Group is handling the sale.

The ad can be seen by clicking here.

Last March, the the Bridge Square post office was one of 16,000 sites nationwide being considered for closure as part of a cost-cutting plan.

Closing the Bridge Square post office means that consumer mailing services in Northfield would be consolidated into the USPS postal carrier annex at 2101 Cannon Road, near Target in the southern end of the city.

Immediately following the USPS’s announcement in March, city government and civic leaders formed in an attempt to at least stall the planned closure.

CAN THE SALE MOVE FORWARD NOW?

Whether the USPS can move forward with a sale at this time is in doubt, however.

In an email to Patch on Sunday, Northfield City Councilor Suzie Nakasian—who has been active in efforts to save the downtown post office—says the USPS could be “out of compliance” with federal historic preservation guidelines until it further discusses a possible sale.

“Those regulations, we are told, require the USPS to meet with local stakeholders including the [City of Northfield] to address potential negative adverse effects of the transfer of the property out of federal hand,” she says in the email. “Both the building itself and the historic district in which it is located have historic designation that fall under federal protection, so we still hope that USPS will comply with those [regulations] and agree to meet with the City and find a way to mitigate the impact of their intended sale of on the the economic vitality and historic character of our downtown.”

City leaders learned about the potential non-compliance from the State Historic Preservation Office, which Nakasian says "has the authority for pursuing compliance with federal historic preservation guidelines."

Even before city leaders learned that the post office was put on the market, a discussion about the Bridge Square post office’s future already had been scheduled for Tuesday’s City Council work session.

Nakasian says in her email, “We are working hard to pursue a win-win solution that will allow the USPS to do what it needs to do while not letting them put a hole in the center of our downtown economy.”