The United States Postal Service (USPS) office in White Plaza will close Oct. 31, allowing the building to be repurposed as part of a campus center makeover. Since Sept. 1, PostalAnnex at Tressider Memorial Union has been providing mail and packaging services for students.
“The post office building, where generations of pre-internet students mingled mid-morning to pick up packages and letters from home, will become a more intimate hub for books and conversation,” Luisa Rapport, director of University media relations, wrote in a statement to The Daily, in reference to turning the post office into a series of gathering spaces.
PostalAnnex, located on the second floor of Tresidder, is a privately-owned shipping and business services center. Students can pack, print, notarize, renew their passports and ship from carriers like USPS, United Parcel Service (UPS), FedEx and Dalsey, Hillblom and Lynn (DHL).
Part of the rationale for the building’s closure is that campus mail no longer goes to USPS, and fewer than 500 of the post office’s 10,000 mailboxes are rented, Rapport said.
The building will be repurposed in the Commons, the first phase of Stanford’s upcoming construction plan known as the Campus Center Project.
Postal Annex opened on Sept. 1 to provide continuous service ahead of the post office’s closure next month. “We’re way more than just a post office,” owner Kent Chu said in an interview with The Daily. “We can do all the printing from thesis paper to research to big poster boards, and we’re going to start offering services in printing vinyl banners.”
PostalAnnex also offers private mailbox rentals, which come with a street address and accept packages from all carriers (different from P.O. boxes). Mailbox owners receive 24/7 access to their boxes, even when the counter is closed.
“It’s more of a reliable shipping service if they want to sign up with us as a mailbox holder as opposed to just being like the undergrad [mail] and everything goes through the package center,” Chu said.
Current USPS box holders can reserve a PostalAnnex mailbox or transfer to another USPS facility. There are locations close to Stanford in Palo Alto and Menlo Park.
“We’ve gotten a lot of mailbox customers, so they are starting to be more aware of that,” Chu said. “The post office is closing, and they’re slowly trickling in.”
Jasmine Luevanos, a PostalAnnex sales associate, trained at the center in Redwood City and moved to Stanford’s location.
“A lot of younger people,” Luevanos said. “They look like they need direction. They don’t really know what we do, so we help them.”
Tresidder Package Center and Escondido Village Package Center still receive all student mail. Charlie Dai ’30 ordered an Ancheer electric bike to the Tresidder Package Center and said the company made the return process a pain. PostalAnnex allowed him to temporarily store and build the bike there.
“People here are really nice,” Dai said. “They let me put my bike here and let me assemble stuff here and lend me scissors. It’s very helpful. I’m very appreciative.”
What is now the post office will become The Commons, a project that will transform the three acres home to the post office and bookstore into enclosed and open-air gathering spaces.
A smaller, curated bookstore with faculty publications and a café will replace the post office, and the space will also be available for events like lectures and book talks. Construction is planned to begin in 2027, Rapport said, with completion by early 2030.
“I’m hopeful we will see tastes and design choices reflective of us students,” Terry Shen ’29, a sophomore class president, said in a statement to The Daily.