A newly repurposed postal facility in Pasco will make mail and package delivery faster and more reliable in the Tri-Cities region, officials said.

The facility – at the Pasco post office at 3500 W. Court St. – is one of the first sorting and delivery centers to open in the country.

It’s in a large space that used to be a processing center before that work shifted to Spokane more than a decade ago. Pasco postal employees then used the facility to sort mail for routes.

But last year, construction started to transform the 100,252-square-foot facility into a new sorting and delivery center, or S&DC with a facelift and new equipment, and it’s now up and running.

The sorting work done at the West Richland post office also has moved into the facility, and about 300 people work there in all, sorting mail for 100,000-plus addresses in Burbank, Kennewick, Pasco, Richland and West Richland.

First of its kind in state

The new facility has updated machines to help with the work, cutting down on missorts and increasing speed, while not replacing or doing away with any jobs, officials said. In fact, the postal service is aggressively hiring around the country, said Kim Frum, a communications specialist for the agency.

The S&DC is the first facility of its kind in the state and one of the first 31 such facilities in the country. It is part of the postal service’s Delivering for America plan, which is investing $40 billion in upgrades and improvements to processing, transportation, delivery and employee experiences.

The postal service plans to open 400 S&DCs in the country in all.

The cost of repurposing the Pasco facility hasn’t been made public.

“This was the first one in Washington because we do have the greatest amount of volume, and we have a lot of growth here,” said Ina Beutler, manager of post office operations for the region. “We’re adding routes consistently.”

U.S. Postal Service employees use a machine to sort packages at the new sorting and delivery center at the Pasco post office, 3500 W. Court St.

| Photo by Sara Schilling

Critical hubs

The S&DCs are “critical hubs” that are the last stop for mail and packages before they’re delivered by carriers, the postal service said. They work in conjunction with 60 regional processing and distribution centers, the agency said.

Postal officials recently opened up the new Pasco S&DC for a media tour.

As the officials pointed out new features and answered questions, employees went about their sorting work. 

A machine whirred to life, scanning packages and using air compression to move them from a conveyor belt into their correct route slot.

“The machine runs about 3,000 packages an hour currently. But we’re getting an upgrade to the machine, and it’ll run 4,000 shortly,” Beutler said during the tour. “It’s more efficient, it’s better for (employees’) bodies.”

EV fleet

The repurposing work also included repaving the parking lot and installing electric vehicle charging infrastructure. The SD&C was expecting about 70 new electric vehicles any day, Beutler said during the tour. They’ll replace some of the aging vehicles in the facility’s roughly 200-vehicle fleet.

Frum said the new S&DC in Pasco is a sign of things to come.

“This is definitely not your grandparents’ postal service, not your great grandparents’ postal service. It may not even be your parents’ postal service,” she said during the tour. “We’re modernizing, getting things together so we can provide great mail service for the future. This is modernization at its finest. We’re just going to keep growing and modernizing.”