Much to the relief of frustrated postal patrons, the Edgartown Post Office reopened for business in Post Office Square at the Triangle in Edgartown Tuesday, after being shuttered for nearly 60 days due to water damage suffered in a heavy rainstorm.
The building sported new cedar shakes, fresh white trim, and a new and intact asphalt shingled roof. A branch of the Martha’s Vineyard Savings Bank remained closed.
Until last week, Edgartown postal customers could only collect their mail at a temporary field office, set up in the old library on North Water Street. They were glad to see the Post Office finally up and running.
“It’s about time. I think it’s great. It looks good,” Paul Shultz of Edgartown said.
“Looks good,” Ivory Littlefield of West Tisbury said.
“It’s nice to see it back,” said a woman who identified herself as a seasonal personal assistant but spoke on the condition of anonymity. “But the parking lot is just a nightmare, so I park across the street.”
Asked if the outside lights he and co-worker Rob Duarte were installing rounded out the electrical work that remained at the site, Zach Sylvia of Powers Electric said there was still a bit of work to do in the basement. Mr. Duarte said they finished the interior work last week.
“We were here Friday with all the painters doing the inside lights, getting it ready so they could open Tuesday,” Mr. Duarte said. “The most important thing was to get this open for the public.” Referring to the closure, he added, “As you know everybody was a little, how can I say it, not happy.”
Mr. Sylvia also said there was electrical work to be done upstairs, work not related to the Post Office but to the apartments. Those apartments and the work that they may still require did not sit well with Tom Wetherall, a West Tisbury resident who runs a property-management business in Edgartown.
“Thirty-one years I’ve had a post box here — the idiocy of letting these people renovate it — repetitive incompetence, there’s no excuse. Now you look at the building and say wow, it’s back open again … These people have a history of doing things backwards,” he said.
“I’ve already made arrangements to have my mail transferred to West Tisbury, where I also have had a Post Office box for 31 years, and I get my Christmas cards in December; they don’t show up in April or May,” Mr. Wetherall said.
Charles Hajjar, a Boston-based developer, is adding five second-story apartments in the Post Office Square complex. The second floor of the building that the Edgartown Post Office and Martha’s Vineyard Savings Bank occupy was under construction in early April when a powerful storm lashed the Vineyard. The rain-damaged interior of the building had to be completely renovated.
Mail delivery was disrupted for Edgartown’s approximately 3,000 postal box customers, who were initially directed to pick up their mail at the Vineyard Haven Post Office. Following some quick arrangements by all concerned, the Edgartown Post Office opened in temporary quarters in the Carnegie building on North Water Street, where customers could only pick up mail.
“I’m very happy with the way the post office came out,” Mr. Hajjar told The Times late Wednesday. “The contractor worked hard to make the June 1 deadline. I want to thank the town for providing a temporary location at the old library and for the residents’ patience over the past six weeks.”
