The News & Observer by Danielle Battaglia
Tyler Evans didn’t know when he opened his business in Research Triangle Park that he wouldn’t have mail delivery.
“I signed a 10-year lease, built out a multi-million facility, hired staff and I didn’t know,” said Evans, franchise owner of Venture X, a flex office and co-working space. “That’s just not something you ask, because that’s just not a question.”
Research Triangle Park sits on 7,000 acres of land — an area half the size of Manhattan — between Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill, and is home to more than 375 companies, 200 startups and 60,000 employees. It’s not a location one would expect not to have mail delivery.
And as of Wednesday, a bipartisan group of North Carolina’s congressional delegation — after seeing a series of issues at the only RTP post office — is asking Postmaster General Louis DeJoy to do something before the state loses out on business.
THE PROBLEM
People like Evans had learned to adapt. He’d bought a P.O. Box, worked with a post office employee to flag correspondence made out to his street address, and sent someone to pick up the mail each day. That included mail going to the more than 100 companies using his facilities.
Then, three weeks ago, a new manager started at the RTP post office and made a change that affected businesses across RTP. Effective immediately, the post office said, any mail sent to a street address would be returned to sender. Only mail sent directly to a business’s P.O. box would be delivered.
For Evans, that meant an immediate business loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars, he said, because part of his work is to be a virtual mail service — and that requires a physical address. Scott Levitan, CEO and president of RTP, said that some businesses will be forced to leave if the post office doesn’t amend this new rule.
“Right now, there are companies in the park that in order to do business, because they either have certification from federal agencies or they need address validation for various practices, they have to be able to receive mail to a street address in order to get those validations and certifications,” Levitan said. “Many of the 375 companies that call RTP home are a huge engine for the North Carolina and U.S. economy.”
President Joe Biden spent the past year touting his work to bolster the economy, including with RTP businesses like Wolfspeed, who received a special visit from the president in March. The White House did not have an immediate comment on the postal service problems at RTP, but a spokesman said he was looking into it. A USPS spokesman also said Wednesday morning they were looking into it.
LETTERS TO DEJOY
On Wednesday, Rep. Deborah Ross, a Democrat from Raleigh, sent a letter to DeJoy asking that he do something about RTP’s mail situation. Her letter was signed by Republican Sens. Thom Tillis and Ted Budd, along with Rep. Valerie Foushee, a Democrat from Hillsborough.
“I think in a bipartisan way we all understand that RTP is an economic engine of the state,” Ross told McClatchy Tuesday. “And if those businesses need the government to deliver the mail to them, that’s just a no-brainer. It’s a bipartisan concern.”
Ross said if RTP is meant to be a place where people go to live, work and play — which she says it has to be in the 21st century — then they need to have 21st century services.
“RTP is a key driver of economic growth in our region, but currently lacks the postal infrastructure needed to keep up with demand,” the letter states. “We strongly urge the U.S. Postal Service to take immediate steps to establish carrier delivery service to meet RTP’s growing needs.”
The lawmakers’ letter was coupled with a second letter signed by representatives from 110 businesses in RTP, who helped outline the costs, operational challenges and compliance issues that come from a lack of mail delivery.
Signatures came from executives at BASF Corporation, Biogen, Credit Suisse Raleigh, Eli Lilly, IBM and PBS North Carolina, among many others. This letter goes further in detailing problems with the post office. Some businesses have purchased P.O. boxes at other post office facilities to get away from the Research Triangle Park post office’s rules. Or they have had packages sent to their personal addresses to ensure timely arrival.
Those who do endure the RTP post office stand in long lines, or get notifications that mail has been delivered only to be told the post office doesn’t have that piece of mail or the business only received its third class mail for the day, the letter from the companies states. “Reliable mail service is critical to the operation of our businesses and organizations,” the letter says. “We strongly believe that the best path forward to address the ongoing issues we face with mail service is to establish carrier mail service for all of RTP.”
SEEKING HELP
Levitan said he tried to work with USPS before making this a public issue.
He said he has not been able to find any documentation that proves RTP has an agreement in place to not have mail delivery. He said if there was one, something from the 1960s would not support the current state of RTP and its growth.
RTP is investing $2 billion into the park in hopes of bringing in retail, office space and residences. Around 500 people are expected to move into RTP by the end of 2024 and that number is expected to reach 2,500 over three years. RTP businesses already self-tax and support their own infrastructure. Levitan told USPS that RTP would be willing to front any costs it would take to get physical mail delivery.
USPS took only one meeting with RTP, more than a year ago, and hasn’t responded to the businesses’ requests since, Levitan said. “We would like to get fair service at the post office in RTP and we would like to be able to have street delivery in the 7,000 acres of RTP,” Levitan said.
Without a response from USPS, he turned to Congress.
A LONG HISTORY OF CHALLENGES
Ross said she and former Rep. David Price, a Democrat from Chapel Hill, first tried to help RTP with USPS last year. Together, she and Ross spent more than six months trying to build a case on why RTP needs better mail service.
Ross said that looking back 25 to 50 years, it made sense for the USPS not to deliver mail to RTP. In the beginning, companies could send a runner to their P.O. box to pick up the mail. But she said now it has evolved. She likened its growth to a town with a few businesses on a single road developing into one with a large subdivision, but one without mail service keeping up with the change “Some of the mail delivery service has not been at all the way the original tenants thought it was going to be,” Ross said. “And so there’s been a big push to get just traditional mail delivery service in RTP, because it is not what it was when it was first started.”
Ross said it was eye-opening for her and Price to learn that the USPS did not keep up with the development of RTP to learn about the many changes that have occurred or the future development in the works. “They thought it was the same way of delivering mail as in the past,” Ross said.
She said by sending the letter to DeJoy, she believes they’ve laid out all he needs to know about how RTP has changed and why the service is important. “We just absolutely feel like we have made the case now,” Ross said. “RTP is 100% on board.”