More ZIP for Wasilla

WASILLA — The U.S. Post Office is splitting its Wasilla ZIP code in half.

Households from Church Road north through the communities of Meadow Lakes, Big Lake and Houston will, as of July 1, get mail using a new 99623 ZIP code. The other half of the postal code area will remain 99654.

“Change is not always easy or convenient, but your new ZIP code will provide additional room for growth in the community and effective mail delivery for years to come,” according to a noticed the post office mailed out last week.

The post office says the new code will make for more timely mail delivery. The old one will still work for a year.

“We have been encouraging people to go ahead and start notifying people on the 15th,” said Mary Barr, address management specialist with the post office in Anchorage.

The change doesn’t affect where the mail goes or who delivers it.

“It does not affect those customers in the post office boxes,” Barr said. “The only thing that’s going to change on this is the address that’s on the mail piece.”

Making the process just that more complicated is the fact that the post office is simultaneously converting rural HC route numbers into physical street addresses, mostly in those areas the change will affect.

That process of converting from HC addresses to physical address has been going on for more than 10 years. The Valley has been a particular challenge for the post office because the area is so big, because some residents here are resistant to the change, and because mail delivery is already complicated here, with Wasilla addresses for people who live miles outside the city limits.

The post office said it plans to do away with all HC addresses, so if you have one, they’re probably already trying to get a hold of you to make the change.

As for who is inside the new ZIP code and who is not, Barr said Church Road is the dividing line. Willow has its own post office, so it’s just for the area between Willow and Church Road.

Anyone unsure of where they fall should look for a notice from the post office that the agency has already begun sending them out.

For more information, contact local postal employee Chris Manning at 376-4202.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.