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During a community meeting on Friday, the United States Postal Service announced a discontinuation study to permanently close the post office in Allston.

According to Rebecca Hosein, who is managing the discontinuation process from USPS headquarters, the study will look into several factors, including feedback from Friday’s meeting and a customer questionnaire among other things. 

“A community that wants [a post office] is certainly one,” Hosein said. “We look at impacts on our employees, on our customers, as well as impacts to postal operations and finances, amongst various other factors, when deciding.”

The study for discontinuation was approved earlier this spring, according to Hosein. It did not officially begin until just before USPS sent out a letter to residents dated September 4 about the intention to close and the community meeting that following week. 

In an interview following the meeting, Allston-Brighton City Councilor Elizabeth ‘Liz’ Breadon called the meeting “very unsatisfactory.”

“I felt that the meeting was very truncated. It was very hard to know who all was in the room. I could see that there were 120 questions asked. I don’t think there’s any way that they addressed more than 20 questions,” she said.

The community meeting, which was scheduled at 1:00 P.M. on Friday, lasted for just over 30 minutes on a Friday afternoon. In comparison, Breadon said that the community meeting on the closure of the Watertown Post Office last week lasted 90 minutes despite also being slated for 30-minutes. 

In the comments, attendees were unanimously opposed to the closure of the post office. Many say that the alternative locations, like the Brighton branch, are too far away for those without a car or have mobility issues. Others say that wait times at other branches to ship a package could range over 20 minutes.

Attendees also point to the disparity in the number of postal offices in Allston-Brighton and nearby locations. While Allston-Brighton and Newton have roughly 80,000 people, Allston-Brighton only has one branch shared between the two neighborhoods while Newton has nine post offices. 

Breadon also mentioned that the post office offers a wide variety of in-person services that are important for different demographics in Allston. For instance, she says that the creative community might rely on its shipping services for selling their work or families need it to obtain an application for a passport.

U.S. Senator Ed Markey made a statement that was read aloud by USPS Strategic Communications Specialist Mark Inglett during the meeting. 

“This closure is part of a troubling pattern of postal closures across Massachusetts. The United States Postal Service is meant to be the front face of the federal government in every community, but is turning its back on its neighborhoods across the Commonwealth,” Markey wrote. “You should reverse this decision to terminate a postal presence here in Allston.”

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In the September 4 letter to Allston residents, Carissa Shea, who is the District Manager of Massachusetts and Rhode Island for USPS, wrote that the intention to close the Allston Post Office was a result of “termination of our lease by our lessor.” Postal services at the Allston Post Office were suspended in 2019 due to long-term structural damage to the building, leading to the termination of the lease.

However, USPS renewed a commitment to relocate near the site of its original location at 47 Harvard Avenue as recently as June 2025. In a letter on June 20, 2025 addressed to Mayor Michelle Wu, USPS Vice President of Facilities Benjamin Kuo wrote in a letter of final determination that USPS has “decided to proceed with the relocation of the Post Office.”

“This is the final decision of the Postal Service with respect to this matter, and there is no right to further administrative or judicial review of this decision,” Kuo wrote at that time.

During the meeting, USPS appeared to walk back on the notion that the letter represented a final decision. In regards to a question about the June letter to the city, Hosein said “there was some communication. However, that communication was not complete.” 

Hosein did not answer a reporter’s question to elaborate on why the communication was not complete despite the letter of final determination. 

For the past two years, USPS had been negotiating a lease with Eden Properties, which had planned to open a post office and retail space on the ground floor at a new building on 25-39 Harvard Avenue. Construction for the new building, which also includes 170 units of housing, began last fall. 

According to Noah Maslan, the developer at Eden Properties, a lease was fully negotiated by November 2025 and was awaiting signature from those higher in the chain of command at USPS. 

The signatures never came. This past April, USPS backed out of their commitment, telling Breadon and Maslan that it was evaluating the current business climate and its operational needs in Allston. 

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According to Hosein, the discontinuation study is expected to take a minimum of 210 days from the community meeting, which took place on September 11. This indicates that the study will be completed no earlier than April 2027. 

After the study is completed, the results will be available on request at the Brighton branch. According to the USPS PO-101 handbook on discontinuing service, the proposal will contain information about the effect of closure on customers, postal employees, economic savings, and how the post office will respond to community needs with the closure. 

Residents will have sixty days to provide comments on the proposal after which USPS will make a final determination.

During the meetings, attendees also suggested alternative locations for a post office, like the Jackson Mann. While USPS did not rule out opening a post office at an alternative location, Breadon said that they had previously determined that the current site is the best location.

“The post office looked at alternative locations in Allston Village, in and around Allston, and they didn’t come up with a location,” said Breadon. “If we start wandering around and thinking, ‘oh, maybe we could put it somewhere else,’ they just want that excuse to just walk away and say no. This is our best bet right now.”

Breadon said that she hopes to elevate the issue with leaders at the federal level, including Representative Stephen Lynch who sits on the committee overseeing the postal service. At the city level, there is a hearing to discuss the Allston Post Office on September 22. Though Boston City Council had requested representatives from USPS to come to the meeting, Breadon said that they did not turn up in two previous instances even after they were subpoenaed. 

Breadon said that there will also be a press conference on Harvard Avenue to bring attention to the issue on October 5. 

But ultimately, Breadon believes that it’s a community voice that might drive USPS back to the negotiating table. 

“It will be a community voice and a huge outcry on the part of the community that will potentially reverse this decision,” she said.