The Pentwater post office was closed from Jan. 30 until Feb. 14, and Pentwater residents with P.O. boxes were required to pick up their mail from the Mears post office during that time. Upon entering the reopened Pentwater facility, residents found it looked very much the same.
Officer-In-Charge Zachary Slykhouse explained the main purpose of the closing was to enable removal of the asbestos flooring and replace it with safe material.
When Slykhouse transferred from the Rockford, Michigan post office to Pentwater in September, he was reviewing the boxes of old records to reduce what had to be stored in the office. He discovered a document that listed a date by which the floor should be replaced because of the asbestos content and made arrangements to have it done. The work did not involve the tile floor in the lobby area.
In addition to replacing the floor, new LED lighting was installed to replace the old light fixtures. It brightened the workspace significantly. “The post office was designed to handle letter mail, and today a large percentage of mail is packages,” Slykhouse said. "Consequently, this building did not have space enough to process the pallets of packages delivered by Amazon. Metal shelving was removed from the center of the office space to provide 600 square-feet of space to accommodate handling packages.
“We had a few changes made in the retail space too for facilitating efficient connections of phones, computers and other electronic equipment purchased since the last remodeling. Fresh paint completed the work.”
The tables removed from the foyer to facilitate the work have not been returned yet. Slykhouse said he plans to have the floor in the foyer cleaned.
