Why can't Manalapan Crossing residents get mail delivered? Post office changed its mind

MANALAPAN - Since Richard Kay and his wife moved into their new house at Manalapan Crossing in October, they have not received any mail in their mailbox at the end of their driveway. Instead, in order to get their mail, they have to drive to the post office three miles away.

“When you go up to the counter, they have a table that has all the mail sitting there,” Kay said. “Just the other day, they gave me someone else’s mail.”

The issue? The U.S. Postal Service wants K. Hovnanian, the developer for Manalapan Crossing, to install cluster box units or CBUs, while K. Hovnanian wants the U.S. Postal Service to honor its previous approval for curbside mailboxes.

Unlike curbside mailboxes, CBUs are located in specific areas of a neighborhood and stack a number of mailboxes together. It makes mail delivery simple for the postal worker. But it's not something likely to appeal to a community reserved for people age 55 and older, where home prices start at over $770,000.

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Manalapan Crossing was approved in 2019. It is being built in phases and families have been moving in since last summer.

According to David Fisher, who has worked with K. Hovnanian’s land acquisition department during Manalapan Crossing’s approval, 39 families are now living in the development. In total, 280 market-rate houses and 58 special needs apartments will be built. The special needs apartments are leased through the nonprofit PennReach Inc.

In a short email dated November 9, 2017, Donna Harrington, the Postal Service's South Jersey District’s growth management coordinator, wrote, “It has been determined that both Manalapan Crossing and Manalapan Brook will be permitted to install mail boxes — two to a post — for curbside mail delivery. Once the address listing is available, please forward to the local Post Office to ensure that these can be entered into the database in a timely manner.”

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'Preliminary and provisional'

However, when Fisher reached out to the post office last year, Michael Delgnan, district manager for New Jersey, wrote that the email from Harrington was “preliminary and provisional.” He wrote that it did not contain the Mode of Delivery agreement and the development’s addresses.

“As this development is a newly established delivery, the appropriate Mode of Delivery is Centralized Delivery,” which Delgnan wrote, would require CBUs.

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He wrote the CBUs, “will improve the value and reliability of the service to our mail customers and is essential in providing the flexibility and financial stability necessary to achieve our universal service mission.”

In an interview, Fisher said, “The email (from Harrington) never said that. It didn’t say this is a provisional approval and it didn’t say it was a preliminary approval. It said that we were approved.”

Fisher appealed the decision to Timothy Haney, director of delivery strategy and policy at the Postal Service headquarters, and has reached out to U.S. Rep. Andy Kim, D-N.J., and Manalapan Committeewoman Susan Cohen, who served as mayor last year. He said he has been in communication with Kim and Cohen, but has not heard back from Haney’s office.

Fisher said the Mode of Delivery agreement was not necessarily because that agreement pertains only to CBUs. He said other developments have not had the same issues. Harrington’s email stated that a second development, Manalapan Brook, was also approved for curbside deliveries. That development, which is building 140 homes two miles west of Manalapan Crossing, is now called the Regency at Manalapan Reserve. It has been receiving curbside mail deliveries.

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'It's really unfair'

In a letter appealing the decision, Fisher wrote that curbside mailboxes were chosen because the development was for seniors.

“If we knew we had to use cluster boxes in a development of this size, we would have established at least three or four locations within the development where people could turn off the road,” Fisher said. Plans could have included parallel parking spaces in front of the cluster boxes or a pavilion dedicated to safe mail delivery and retrieval.

“But we never planned for that because we were approved for curbside deliveries, so that’s why this really took us by surprise,” he said. “I believe that at this particular juncture it’s really unfair to withdraw an approval that the post office provided and then insist that we install cluster boxes when we never planned for them.”

Xavier Hernandez, spokesman for the Postal Service, wrote in an email that, “Developers are expected to follow the regulations concerning CBUs outlined in the Developer’s Guide for Centralized Delivery, which the Postal Service makes available for developers. Developers are also expected to consult with the local postmaster or local postal management when determining the location of CBUs to ensure the boxes can be safely accessed.”

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He continued, “The Postal Service makes every attempt to deliver the mail, but mail cannot be delivered without an approved mailbox installed by the developer. In such cases, the postmaster makes arrangement for those customers to pick up mail at the local Post Office.”

Kay and his wife decided to move to Manalapan Crossing because it was a community for active seniors with first-floor bedrooms and a management company that shovels snow from residents' driveways. Kay said right now, only a few dozen residents live there and must go to the post office to pick up their mail. But when all the homes are built and sold, 280 families could be heading to the post office biweekly.

“A year from now, I don’t want to say we’re in the same situation,” he said. “that we’re not getting our mail.”

Olivia Liu is a reporter covering transportation, Red Bank and western Monmouth County. She can be reached at oliu@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Manalapan Crossing residents can't get mail delivered to homes