Fort Lauderdale's Colee Post Office will close after lease expires

The Colee Post Office at 1404 E. Las Olas Blvd. Ste. B will suspend operations after business closes Friday, July 10, removing a downtown Fort Lauderdale mail stop that residents, condo owners, seniors and small businesses have used for stamps, packages and PO box access. The United States Postal Service still lists the branch with retail hours Monday through Friday from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., but the location is now marked closed online.

The closure follows the expiration of the lease on the Las Olas building, and the property owner did not renew it. Las Olas Friendship LLC owns the site, and a lawyer for the owner said the Postal Service and the landlord decided not to extend the lease. USPS is reviewing nearby sites that could become a new post office, but it has not identified a replacement for the Las Olas corridor.

That uncertainty matters in a part of Fort Lauderdale where walking to errands is part of daily life. Las Olas Boulevard runs from the central business district to Fort Lauderdale Beach, and the Colee branch sits in the middle of a corridor lined with condos, offices, shops and restaurants. For people who rely on a nearby postal counter instead of a drive across town, the loss turns a routine stop into a longer trip to another Fort Lauderdale branch.

Nearby postal alternatives listed online include Causeway, Alridge, Gateway and Southside, but USPS has not said which one would most directly replace Colee for Las Olas customers. That leaves the practical question unresolved for people who use the downtown office for daily shipping, package pickup or post office boxes.

The site itself has a long paper trail. The post office first opened in the late 1940s, and a 2011 Seminole Tribune article described a rally to save the Colee Station Post Office, calling it a Fort Lauderdale staple for more than 65 years. A commercial real-estate listing says the property at 1404-1406 E. Las Olas Blvd. has been under the same ownership since 1974 and that the U.S. Post Office has been a tenant there for more than 40 years. Another listing says the building was built in 1955.

Las Olas Chabad Jewish Center, which is nearby at 1302 E. Las Olas Blvd., says it is building a broader campus on Las Olas, adding another layer to the redevelopment backdrop around the block. For now, though, the bigger change for Broward readers is immediate and concrete: a familiar postal branch on one of Fort Lauderdale’s busiest streets is headed for closure, and the nearest replacement has yet to be pinned down.