The new downtown Fresno post office on Kern Street northeast of North M Street replaces the previous location just a block away. Photo by David Castellon

If you’ve been looking for the Downtown Fresno post office in recent days, there’s a chance you went to the wrong place.

That’s because the U.S. Postal Service vacated after Aug. 24 its location of nearly eight decades on the ground floor of the Fresno Unified School District headquarters on Tulare Street, just northwest of North M Street, and opened three days later a new post office a little more than a block away.

 

Though the new location for the post office — dubbed the “Civic Center Finance Station” — has a listed address on M Street, the public entrance actually is on Kern Street, just northwest of M Street.

Spotting it may be difficult for some, as there are no postal boxes or flagpoles out front to help distinguish it from the FedEx Office Print & Ship Services store and the Gus Kabob restaurant on either side of it.

Postal officials announced their plans to relocate the downtown post office last year, because they were losing their lease on the Tulare Street building, as the owner, Fresno Unified, had plans to make use of the 2,500-square-foot space.

Following a public meeting about the move in late January, postal officials reported in a press release that “there appeared to be a consensus that it was important to maintain a presence within the downtown Fresno neighborhood. The location at 855 M Street is the best option available to maintain service within the community.”

The new facility — formerly Kiku Floral, which relocated — also gives the postal service more space, 3,431 square feet.