CORTEZ – Just in time for the Christmas mailing rush, the fishing village of Cortez is receiving an early holiday gift – its post office will remain open for another five years.
The post office, at 12112 44th Ave. W. – also the site of the community’s bulletin board and many neighborly chats – had been scheduled to close on Oct. 24 after landlord John Banyas did not renew the lease.
His reason, he told The Sun, was that a flagpole owned by the post office fell and injured a man, who sued him, and that the U.S. Postal Service refused his subsequent request to add him to its insurance policy. He sued the post office for eviction.
But the Postal Service now has added him to its insurance policy and signed a new five-year lease, Banyas said.
“It’s a good thing,” he said. Without the new lease, village residents would have had to travel more than 5 miles each way to the Palma Sola post office to get their mail every day.
During the dispute, disgruntled customers suggested alternatives including the more convenient Bradenton Beach post office, home delivery, and the purchase of the former Cortez fire station as an alternate site for the post office.
The village has had a post office since 1896 when it was in the Bratton store at the Albion Inn. The store, which outlived the inn, was relocated to the Florida Maritime Museum in Cortez and is under renovation.