A Kansas post office was set to close this month. The owner struck a new deal
A Park City post office that was slated to close at the end of September will remain open after a new agreement was reached to preserve the location.
The post office inside Leeker’s Family Foods received a 120-day notice of closure back in June from the U.S. Postal Service. The closure would have left Park City residents without a post office within city limits, so Chris Steindler, the owner of Leeker’s, took action.
“We reached out to anybody who would listen to us,” Steindler said Monday. “We talked to both United States senators. We talked to our representative here. I talked to the mayor of Park City, I talked to our local Kansas rep, and [they] all put a letter to the United States Post Office.”
The letter, co-authored by U.S. Sens. Roger Marshall and Jerry Moran and U.S. Rep. Ron Estes, was sent June 20 and asked the federal agency to either keep the Leeker’s post office or open a new location in Park City.
“The post office stuck by their guns, and they said, ‘No, we’ve decided to close it,’” Steindler said of the initial conversations.
That’s when Steindler decided to re-negotiate the terms.
“Eventually I just made [them] an offer. I said, ‘I’ll just take the commission out ... we’ll just work for free.’ And it turns out that ... free is the magic word,” Steindler said.
The Park City location is a contract postal unit, which means it provides USPS products and services and accepts mail on behalf of the agency. CPUs are usually operated out of other, larger businesses. In this case, Leeker’s Family Foods is the contract holder for the CPU. Steindler declined to give details of the contract.
On Sept. 12, the USPS agreed to the new terms. So, while its final day was set for Tuesday, Sept. 30, the Leeker’s CPU will run “business as usual” into October, Steindler confirmed.
“The customers have been very excited about it. They didn’t like the idea that they were gonna have to drive to a neighboring town just to use the post office,” Steindler said.
The Leeker’s post office location first opened in the mid-‘80s and has played a “vital” role since, Steindler said in a June interview with The Eagle, shortly after he received notice of the closure.
“Park City does not have their own brick and mortar post office, but Park City is a big city. It’s a growing city. They need a post office, and we’ve been that for almost 40 years,” he said.
Park City, located north of Wichita, has a population of more than 9,000 people, according to U.S. Census Bureau data from 2024.
Leeker’s Family Foods is located at 6223 N. Broadway. If it was closed, the next closest USPS location would be Kechi’s at 307 E. Kechi Road, about 10 minutes from Leeker’s.
The postal unit in Park City will remain open whenever the grocery store is open, every day from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.
