A STICKY ISSUE IN LOTHIAN

August 12, 2024

It's not exactly a historic site, the old Lothian Post Office. It's no great beauty, either.

Yet the closing of the sturdy little building with black vinyl siding that sits on a dusty side of Route 2 has provoked a wave of sentiment and indignation in this inland pocket of southern Anne Arundel County.

Sometime next year, the U.S. Postal Service will abandon its 30-year-old site near the center of Lothian proper and replace it with a larger post office in Waysons Corner, six miles away in the far western corner of the rural 20711 Zip code.

Neighbors, some of whom just heard about the move last month, were dismayed. Although some simply complain that the new location will be inconvenient for them, many fear that the move will rob Lothian of the main thing that elevated it above the dozens of other Southern Maryland crossroads communities that barely earn a dot on the map.

Take away the post office, they say, and there's not much left to Lothian.

"It's a very sharp loss of identity for those of us who live in the area," said Dick Fries, a Lothian resident for more than 30 years.

Postal Service officials decided in the summer to make the move after realizing that an already-cramped space soon would be inadequate to serve a growing population.

"We're often torn between preserving a beloved center of a community and serving customers," said Sandra Harding, a Postal Service spokeswoman.

Alan Grimes, manager of the Postal Service's administrative services for the Maryland suburbs, said officials conferred with local government leaders and considered such issues as customer access and safety.

The new building, which will sit on Southern Maryland Boulevard off Route 4, is being designed. It will be about 4,700 square feet, compared with the current 1,500-square-foot space. The old building has 240 mailboxes, with a long waiting list, but the new one will have about 360 boxes.

Despite the new location, the postal center still will be called the Lothian Post Office, and Lothian will remain the official mailing address for people in the 20711 Zip code.

In many ways, Waysons Corner seems a logical choice for a post office. The area around the busy intersection of Route 4 and Route 408 near the Prince George's County line has boomed in a way Lothian has not.

Besides the post office, Lothian has two schools, a Texaco and an Amoco (both with food shops), a couple of churches and a doctor's office.

Waysons Corner, on the other hand, has a sprawling trailer park, a Texaco, a bingo parlor, a bar, a hardware store, a bank, a Dash-In grocery store, a Taco Bell and a Dunkin Donuts.

In addition, Waysons Corner recently was deemed a potential "growth area" in the county's proposed long-term General Development Plan, which County Council members will vote on later this year. The General Development Plan process tries to thwart "sprawl" and preserve rural and undeveloped green space by restricting development in such areas and trying to funnel growth into small, concentrated areas.

Waysons Corner was pegged as a "primary growth area" because it's already very developed, located near major roads and zoned as a commercial area, said John Morris, spokesman for the county's planning department. The designation doesn't mean that the county will promote growth there, he said, but rather that "if there's going to be development in south county, this is the best place." Meanwhile, county officials maintain that they will try to deter growth in still-rural areas such as Lothian.

According to county records, a post office has been in Lothian since before 1878, when a map was printed that also showed a schoolhouse, a store and a grange hall in the area.

Lothian was never much of a town. Named for a prominent plantation built there in 1803, it was typical of Southern Maryland crossroads villages that never developed much beyond the barest services catering to the surrounding tobacco-farming community, said Donna Ware, the county's historic sites planner.

As such, the Lothian Post Office lent the area at the intersection of Routes 2 and 408 a sense of place never afforded to nearby communities such as Bayard and Drury, which found themselves lumped into the Lothian mailing address.

About 40 Lothian area residents turned out to a public hearing last month with postal officials to discuss the move. Many complained that they had heard nothing about the proposed move until after the decisions were final.

For some, the problem is distance.

"My parents don't like it," said Clifton Brown, a Lothian resident who stopped by recently to pick up his mail. "They're retired and live right down the road. It's been here for years, and they don't want to go all the way up there."

Others object to the Waysons Corner location. Judy McHenry, whose family has owned the house across the road from the post office for a few generations, said she doesn't feel comfortable driving to 20711's more developed sector. "There's all this loitering, drug dealing, traffic," she said.

Besides, Fries said, Lothian needs it more. "Lothian is two gas stations and a post office," he said dryly. "Now we're just going to have two gas stations."

Fries and his wife operate a quilting business that takes them to the post office at least twice a day to ship quilts. He can walk there now; next year, he'll have a 12-mile round trip.

He speculated that most Lothian area residents will shun 20711's new headquarters in favor of the Harwood Post Office, which is easier to reach than Waysons Corner, just three miles north on Route 2. Soon, he predicted, the Harwood station will get too crowded with Lothian folk.

"Maybe you're going to have to move the Harwood Post Office down to Lothian," he said. CAPTION: After 30 years at this site in Lothian, the Postal Service is replacing this office with a larger one in Waysons Corner, in the far western corner of the rural 20711 Zip code.

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