While he still won’t quite call it a done deal, Kenmore City Manager Frederick Stouder said plans to relocate the city’s branch of the U.S. Post Office are moving forward.
At the same time, as the post office is expected to take over what is now Kenmore City Hall, city officials are readying for a temporary move into leased space on the second floor of the Schnitzelbank building at 7330 N.E. Bothell Way.
Stouder said hardly a day goes by when movers are not in City Hall providing crates and boxes or removing items from the walls. The actual move should take place beginning Oct. 16 with an Oct. 19 open date.
In order to complete that move and set up the new space on Bothell Way, Stouder said city offices will close Oct. 16.
Stouder said the post office has voiced a need for approximately 1,900 square feet of the current City Hall. Post-office architects came up with a couple of possible designs, but Stouder said those possibilities now have been refined and generally completed. He expects the post office to be up and running its new location by the middle of November.
While officials are obviously moving forward under the assumption the post office will be relocating, Stouder said no final approval has arrived from postal officials in Washington, D.C. Stouder said an appraisal of the lease agreement offered the local post office is under way, but he anticipates no problems.
Although changes might be made, Stouder added that to date, postal officials are looking at a 20-year lease on their new space with the understanding they may have to move to a nearby location if the area around City Hall is developed as planned.
The current Kenmore City Hall sits on the edge of the Kenmore Village shopping plaza, long the target of city redevelopment plans. Officials repeatedly have blamed the stalled project on the stalled economy.
In the meantime, the location of the post office became an issue after the King County Library System tabbed the office’s current location — 6531 N.E. 181st St. — as the perfect spot for a new city library. The rub became that the post office had an extended lease on the property and could have stayed put until 2011 blocking the library project, which was described by King County officials as ready to move forward.
Eventually, after several exchanges between city and postal officials, including trips to Washington, D.C. by Stouder and Kenmore Mayor David Baker, the plan emerged to move the post office into City Hall. Officials already had plans to vacate that facility, as a new City Hall is rising up on 68th Avenue Northeast and should be open for business by the spring of next year.
