No Handicap Parking at Post Office has Resident Fuming

While at the on Monday, I overheard an irate customer venting to a postal employee about the lack of handicapped   parking.

Not being in her shoes, it wasn’t something I had noticed, so when she finished her tirade, I introduced myself and redirected her anger in my direction.

She waited for 20 minutes in her car, she said, for one of the on-street parking spots on Sarah Avenue to open up. A non-employee spot in the lot behind the post office was also occupied. None of the spots along Sarah Avenue are designated for handicapped parking.

She thought that a government building would be one of the first to comply with accessibility laws, and was incredulous that a spot for handicapped drivers didn’t exist. She said she had just moved to Maplewood from Las Vegas and was beginning to think that it was the worst decision of her life.

“I’m 72 and now I have this awful condition in my legs,” she said. “It’s terrible.” She declined to have her name used for this article.

It seemed strange to me, too, that a U.S. post office didn’t have at least one handicap spot. So I called around. Wasn’t this covered in the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA)?

Post offices aren't required to comply with ADA because the buildings are covered by the previously passed Architectural Barriers Act (ABA), said Earlene Sesker from the United States Access Board. However, that only applies to post offices that were built after the law was passed, which was in 1968.

But a plaque on the Maplewood Post Office's wall notes that the building was constructed in 1938. If a parking lot was modified after 1968, it would need to comply, but on-street parking isn’t covered under the ABA or the ADA, but Sesker said that may be under review. She offered to help me file a complaint until I told her the reason for my call.

So the Maplewood Post Office isn’t required by law to provide handicapped parking. And Mike Hawkins, the post office manager, said it's out of his hands. He blames the City of Maplewood for not letting him designate a handicapped spot, even in the lot on the post office property.

He said this problem has come up many times over the years, and he’s requested city hall to designate a handicapped spot, but it's never happened.

“I’m not the problem,” he said multiple times. must cooperate with the Maplewood Post Office and the St. Louis postmaster downtown, he said.

Ross Todd, the city's building official and fire marshall, said the post office once had a handicapped spot and "did away with it." The federal government has jurisdiction over the post office, not Maplewood, a local municipality, Todd said.

Hawkins also mentioned that with the opening up across Sarah Avenue, parking for the post office will be “10 times worse.”

The frustrated new Maplewood resident said she was going to take it up with city hall.