When the island community of Kauai found out that the U.S. Postal Service was planning to shutter and sell its historic post office in Lihue, it sprang into action just as it had as the post office's creation in 1939.

The Historic Hawaii Foundation organized a grassroots campaign to save the post office, even mailing coconuts—yes, coconuts— all the way to San Francisco to tell the Postal Service why their office is worth saving. They haven't declared victory yet; the Postal Service is soliciting another round of public comment. But the Historic Hawaii Foundation and preservationists throughout Kauai are promising to keep fighting.

We spoke with Kiersten Faulkner, Historic Hawaii's executive director, about the community and its battle to save Lihue Post Office.

Talk about the history of the post office and why it’s so important to the Lihue community.

Lihue is the capital of the county of Kauai, and this post office is one of only two that were built during the Depression Era. So it was the first federal building on Kauai island. During the Depression there was a standardized architecture plan for all of the post offices, and the Kauai community rejected that plan. They said it did not fit in well with their island style and expectations. So an early activism campaign actually resulted in changing the design of this post office to fit in better with the community.

Do you see parallels between then and now?

I think Kauai has a reputation for being very active, and the community is very proud of its history and its heritage. So they will express that concern vocally. They did then and they do know.

What are the Postal Service’s reasons for wanting to move the post office?

They’ve actually been quite vague about that. Their initial presentation said that they were concerned about parking, that there are only a few designated parking stalls on the site and it’s located on a busy street. So they were concerned about access. But their proposed relocation site actually has worse access and the county of Kauai has a large parking lot directly across the street from the post office. The county has offered to designate those parking stalls for the post office to use exclusively and to install a crosswalk to connect the site to the parking stalls.

So they stepped up and offered a solution to the stated reason for the relocation. Unfortunately, the post office has recently said they felt they hadn’t explained their needs well enough and they were going to restart the entire public input process. So we’re really unclear about what problem they’re trying to solve. Because the problem that they said they were trying to solve has been solved. And yet they have not backed off on this plan. So it seems like a pretext for something else at this point.

What’s the latest on their plan?

The post office sent a letter to the mayor and that letter has now been posted. It simply says that they will restart and redo the public input process. They don’t provide any timeline, they don’t provide any steps, they just say that’s the plan. So we’re all in "wait and see" mode.

What’s the campaign been like so far?

What we’ve done so far is a massive mailing campaign under the first public comment period. That included printing and distributing postcards that had a pre-printed message of support for the historic post office that people could sign and add their own name and comments. We mailed about 750 of those. And then there was this coconut mailing campaign (116 were mailed), which was really more about sending a symbolic statement of support for the post office but not really having technical comments, obviously—it’s a coconut.

We had a lot of participation in those two mailing campaigns, primarily in the Kauai community. Our grassroots volunteers went door to door to drum up support and there was a whole coconut parade that was led by the mayor. It was very dramatic. And in addition to that, of course, we wrote technical comments on the details of the proposal.

It’s hard to know [what we’ll do next] without an explanation from the post office if they’re going to apply the previous comments to their redo. You would hope they’d take the postcards and the technical letters and the coconuts and say we will take all of that into consideration in our new process

What are some of the changes happening in Lihue and how should the post office fit into the future of the community?

Lihue has been undergoing quite a bit of community planning and master planning, and they have identified Rice Street—which is the main street—as the core of the business district and the center of revitalization for this commercial area. And in doing that community plan they have identified historic preservation as a cornerstone. So the post office is one of the identified buildings especially because of its public nature and location. It’s directly across the street from the Kauai Museum, which is a historic building, and it’s next to a couple of other historic properties.

This revitalization plan calls for retaining and revitalizing each of these historic properties. It also calls for transportation improvements; a multi-modal approach to have streets that have opportunities not only for drivers but also for bicycles, pedestrians, easy crosswalks, better parking.

All of those pieces are in place, so when the post office announced its intention to move and sell the building it undermined all those efforts. That’s one of the reasons the community has been so engaged and so active. They’ve bought into this broader plan and this broader vision, and they feel like this attempt by the post office to undo that work would be devastating.