WHITE FLINT POST OFFICE CLOSES (PHOTOS)

The Dark Side of White Flint, Part 27

Welcome to The Dark Side of White Flint, an ongoing series about the not-so-wonnerful, wonnerful, wonnerful side of urbanizing the suburbs of Montgomery County.

The U.S. Post Office inside White Flint Mall has closed, and its replacement will not open until this summer. Patrons of the post office are being left in the lurch, much like their neighbors to the south in downtown Bethesda, where residents lost 2 walkable post offices, post office parking (regular and handicapped), and drive-up drop boxes, in what became an infamous local debacle.

If you had a P.O. Box at White Flint, those services will temporarily shift to the Kensington Post Office at 10325 Kensington Parkway - hardly walking distance. Mail services are available there, as well. Customers may also find full U.S. Mail services at the Pike Post Office, at 143 Rollins Avenue in Rockville.

White Flint won't have its own post office again until July, in the Nicholson Lane Plaza Shopping Center.

Here are photos from these final hours of the vacant post office, which will indeed be missed by nearby residents:

GHOST TOWN: THE DARK SIDE OF WHITE FLINT, PART 13 (PHOTOS)

Click here to read Part 12, and find links to more White Flint Mall demolition photo galleries.

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As I stood in front of the shuttered Bertucci's restaurant in dying White Flint Mall, two young women passed behind me. Surveying the empty corridors, one said, "It's like a ghost town in here!"

The winding-down mall's customer traffic is best measured with a PKE Meter these days.

Is it a zombie movie set, or a successful mall turned into retail haunted house overnight by an operator eager to cash in on speculative real estate profits?

Check out this photo gallery, and decide for yourself: