Cramped Milford post office needs to find a new home

MILFORD — The Milford postmaster delivered the latest sign of the area’s booming growth when he appeared at the borough council Monday. Hank Radcliff posted a notice on the borough hall door and asked the council’s help in locating likely properties to relocate the West Harford Street post office. The numbers make Radcliff’s case for him. The Milford office serves some 9,000 postal customers. When the existing 5,200-square-foot office opened in 1968, it had one delivery route. Now there are 14 and a new one is added every year. The office has 29 employees and eight local delivery vans. Customer parking has almost been eliminated and when the 53-foot-long mail delivery trailers arrive at “three in the afternoon, I have to bring employees out in the street, to stop traffic. It’s unsafe,” Radcliff said. Postal officials are looking for a site for an 8,000-square-foot building that would provide 75 to 85 parking spaces. Radcliff said he hopes to relocate within a year. In other council business Monday, the board agreed to ask PennDOT for the release of $22,000 from the borough’s state liquid fuels funding. The money would provide a one-third share of paving costs for the little used, easterly end of Harford Street. They also agreed to waive the usual order of permitting for a proposed new Rite-Aid store, to allow developers to seek a demolition permit and architectural review board approval first, instead of last, since the project at the corner of Broad and Harford streets will not be possible without removal of a structure in the historic commercial district.