Zebulon — The Post Office may be in need of a new building, but Officer-in-Charge Judith Pate says that won’t happen until business picks up.

“We want a building large enough to [accompany] new neighborhoods and development, but we need these new addresses before we can build a bigger building,” Pate said.

In the past year postal officials approved a new building offering an additional 500 square feet of work space.

The extra space may free up elbow room in the office, but isn’t practical in Pate’s eyes. She saw the inevitable growth in the local service area, assessed the pros and cons of a new building and decided such an addition wouldn’t serve the needs of its customers like a much larger building would a few years down the road. The more use the office gets, the more space the postal service allows each branch.

“We’re fine with what we have right now,” Pate said, noting the office isn’t straining to serve its current number of active households beyond on-site traffic issues.

Pate said it would be too early to opt for a new building now, upgrading from roughly 4,500 to 5,000 square feet, when in 10 years the building might need to be much larger.

The sometimes “painstaking process” of getting a new post office can take years at times, as Carl Walton, media correspondent for the United States Postal Service, described it.

“We look stringently to decide which towns absolutely need it,” Walton said. He said the growth ratio normally applies, but decisions to approve new buildings are made on individual basis and also assess the needs specific to the office in question.

Mayor Bob Matheny said the town has been working on a new post office for a couple of years. Town Manager Rick Hardin said he went to a district meeting about six months ago and in the meeting it was told Zebulon was second or third on the list requesting new buildings in the district. But in many cases, the funding simply isn’t there.

“We’re attempting to make sure they keep us on this list,” Hardin said, as circumstances cause the ranks to change from time to time, and the process of waiting in line requires the town keep pushing forward rather than let off and have to start from scratch.

Pate said rather than take the postal service up on its approved, slightly larger building, those at the Zebulon office have taken matters into their own hands.

“It wouldn’t have been worth the move,” Pate said. “We’ve got a good, convenient location here.”

Instead, the back rooms of the building have been renovated. By taking walls out, extra space has been created. Other practical space-saving tactics have also been implemented.

“I added 60 boxes where six large drawers were that hadn’t been used in years,” Pate said.

“In Zebulon it wasn’t clear-cut a new building would solve all the problems,” Walton said. “Adding space one place in many cases takes away from another. If the workers can find a way to cope, even if on the waiting list for a new building, we generally agree to making the renovations, as it is a capital improvement.”

Other reasons Pate said a marginally larger building wouldn’t be as effective include factors as simple as windows. Moving to the new building would result in two windows instead of three, an undesirable shift according Pate, who noted Knightdale’s office currently uses its dutch door as a third window.

Parking and dock space will continue to fall short of office needs, and will be high on the list in lobbying for a new building in the future. Currently there are 10 regular and two handicapped parking spaces for customers, and many have to park on the side streets. But in the office, Pate said the employees know each other well and have been good about keeping things spread out evenly. That’s a sacrifice the office staff is willing to make in waiting for bigger things to come.

“I’d love a building twice as large,” Pate said. “We’re just better off with what we’ve got right now. In the near future we are going to need to expand, as we will outgrow this facility.”

Hardin said there are many areas with out-dated post offices that are looking to rebuild. The ongoing lobbying battle is something the town is still involved in today.

“Our ZIP code covers much land, so we see the need for the post office to accompany a larger area,” Hardin said.

Hardin said the town is currently in the process of getting a status update on the possibility of such a building.