Postmaster General & CEO

United States Postal Service

Dear Mr. Potter:

Words alone can’t express the gratitude Tacoma owes you for your wonderful Christmas gift, which arrived last week.

Nonetheless, let me thank you – on behalf of all Tacomans – for selling off the surface parking lot your agency has owned in downtown Tacoma since the early 1900s.

And by wisely agreeing to sell it to Mr. Erivan Haub, the generous German billionaire who himself loves Tacoma, you have allowed Mr. Haub to add your key parcel to his other land holdings around it.

You certainly have lived up to the unofficial Postal Service motto, “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”

From my first open letter to you about this in November 2006, I tried to explain what the sale of this old parking lot for postal delivery trucks would mean if you could find a way to sell it. (I’m sorry if my words about your “unfulfilled promises” and “lackadaisical federal agency” offended. Chalk it up to desperation.)

Now, for the first time in many decades, one capable and willing private owner controls a large enough footprint in the heart of 98402 to create something on a grand scale.

Mr. Haub’s people in town tell me that, under the right market circumstances, Tacoma could see either an office skyscraper larger than anything that exists here today or an urban shopping mall that could lure big-name retailers.

Either one makes you a hero and honorary citizen of Tacoma for figuring out a way to do what none of your predecessors could.

I understand the purchase-and-sale agreement won’t close for up to six months. But I’m amazed at the loophole you and your West Coast real estate representative, Randy Alder, found to put this property into the hands of Mr. Haub.

All along I thought you would have to sell the parcel on the open market to the highest bidder. I didn’t know your regulations allowed you to sell directly to an adjacent property owner without public bidding if you believe that method earns you the best price.

Your master’s degree in management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School must have taught you how to leverage an asset.

Because had this parcel ended up in the hands of anyone other than Mr. Haub, it would have stunted downtown’s development potential.

I’ve learned your sales agreement calls for appraised market value plus 15 percent. If the appraised value comes back at $75 per square foot, which other downtown properties have sold for recently, that gets you $2,445,000 million plus $366,750.

An estimated $2.8 million deal that means so much more than that for us.

When so many bureaucrats take heat for not living up to public expectations, you have set an example to admire. Two weeks after my first letter to you, your man in Seattle, District Manager Harold Matz, sent a letter to Tacoma Mayor Bill Baarsma promising an expedited sale.

The U.S. General Accounting Office and the President’s Commission on the U.S. Postal Service already had dinged you for ineffective management of your real estate holdings.

President Bush’s commission stated that you had vacant and underused properties with little, if any, value to modern-day delivery of our nation’s mail.

The GAO noted in 2005 that you need to realign and consolidate processing and distribution operations.

Your own “2006-2010 Transformation Plan” noted that since 2002 the Postal Service has generated $65 million a year from the sale or lease of old properties. When our turn came, you didn’t flinch.

You must live by the words of this country’s first postmaster general, Benjamin Franklin, who said, “A good conscience is a continual Christmas.”

Well, Mr. Potter, all Tacoma hopes you have a Merry Christmas and a continued clear conscience in the New Year.

Dan Voelpel: 253-597-8785

dan.voelpel@thenewstribune.com