Station P, near Bloor and Spadina, will move to the Bloor and Ossington area this fall
Photo: Victoria Prouse/Gleaner News
By Victoria Prouse
Annex residents will soon have to travel much farther to reach a full-service post office. Canada Post recently announced that in October, Station P will be relocated from its current site at 704 Spadina Ave., just south of Bloor Street, all the way to 875 Bloor St. W., just east of Ossington Avenue. The new post office will be nearly two kilometres west of the Spadina location.
This move has surprised Station P customers, and those interviewed expressed frustration at the relocation.
“I’m so sorry to hear that. I’m always around this area,” said one customer.
A recent graduate of the University of Toronto, Sima Atri, echoed the sentiment. “I’m really upset about the move. It will be so inconvenient for all the students who live in the area.”
Reasons for the move have been poorly publicized. A Station P employee, who wished to remain anonymous, said that the University of Toronto had refused to renew Canada Post’s long-term lease agreement at the property.
“The post office lease expires August 2013 and we are not aware of any other lease discussions,” said Michael Kennedy, issues and media relations officer at the University of Toronto. The property was purchased by the University’s Asset Management Fund in December 2010.
Eugene Knapik, manager in the Canada Post Media Relations division, also said that it was Canada Post’s decision not to renew their long-term lease at this site, stating the present location no longer suited the needs of Canada Post.
704 Spadina Ave. also houses TopCuts and A&C Games. Vicki Nguyen, staff member at TopCuts, said the business is facing uncertainty regarding their future at this site. “We don’t know because we are a big company. I don’t know when the lease finishes.”
Gar Wan Toy, owner of A&C Games, is facing similar uncertainty. “We might be staying, we might be going. We’ll probably find out by next year. We’ll be here for at least another year.”
Vera DeWaard, managing editor of [Descant ITAL], a literary journal with nearby offices, is a frequent user of Station P, and summarizes the move as “inconvenient.”
“From what I understand,” said DeWaard, “[Canada Post] wasn’t able to renew the lease. It’s unavoidable, it’s not going to change, despite how much inconvenience it causes.
“We are always dealing with mail, always shipping out copies of our magazine … There are other locations in the downtown area that are of similar distance, but none of them are closer, or more convenient, than this one is.”
DeWaard currently picks up the magazine’s mail on her way to work. Moving the full-service post office will mean an inconvenient stopover on her way to the office. “We’re trying to decide whether we’re going to continue using Station P or move to another location,” she said.
While the move presents obvious usability issues to residents and businesses in close proximity to Spadina Avenue, DeWaard emphasizes an additional financial problem is incurred with the relocation. “The move may require us to change our P.O. Box address, which is going to be difficult because we have a lot of stationery with our address on it.
“A lot of things are still up in the air… We’re sort of just hanging on, looking at our options. It’s going to be troublesome, in any case,” said DeWaard.
The future of the site remains unknown at this point. According to Kennedy, “U of T does not currently have any plans for the site or for additional [nearby] purchases.”