Ten San Diego County post office branches, including one Downtown, recently emerged on a national list of 677 facilities marked for possible closure or consolidation. And while early indicators show that a Point Loma ­facility will be spared, the Downtown location is not out of the woods yet, according to postal ­officials. The list was presented by the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) to the House of Representatives on July 30 and included the George Washington facility at 2692 C St. Downtown. Of those 677 facilities identified nationally, however, none will be subject to closure in the immediate future, according to postal officials. “It’s customary. This process we’ve had in place for many, many years,” said USPS spokesperson Don Smeraldi. “Like any business, we’re always looking for ways if we have extra space. “With the financial situation we’re in, it’s becoming more important than ever,” Smeraldi added. “From a national level, they said out of all the 3,000 post offices that are in urban centers and cities are there any that we could possibly consolidate.” Smeraldi said the list is part of the postal service’s regular review process. He said all affected parties, including employees, em­ployee unions, customers and city officials, would be notified well in advance of any possible consolidations or closures. “It’s so preliminary, and all the stakeholders would all be kept informed,” Smeraldi said. “It’s not something that can happen overnight.” According to Smeraldi, the review process will have started Oct. 1, the beginning of the new fiscal year. He said the beginning of the new fiscal year is not a deadline for any decisions to be made and that a timetable on closures is unknown. “It’s about the extra facility space, and maintaining a retail presence in the area just depends on where that might be,” Smeraldi said. “We’ve determined that about 30 percent of our retail revenue doesn’t take place at a traditional post office anymore.” Smeraldi said more customers are using the USPS website, which allows customers to ship packages without leaving their houses. Other locations that offer similar services to the post office include contract postal units — stores that the Postal Service contracts with — and ­grocery stores, warehouse stores and ATMs that sell stamps. “If you’re looking at different possibilities, you probably want to go with the best possibility in that the floor space in this particular location when we consolidate with another one would be to our greatest advantage to do that. So that would probably be the first thing we’d initiate,” Smeraldi said. Smeraldi said some of the potential closures and consolidations might not even affect ­customers at all. “We’re talking about maybe consolidating some of the retail service with a nearby office or, totally transparent to customers, consolidating some of our carrier operations,” Smeraldi said. “We have facilities that are just letter carriers in the building. We may consolidate that building with another one and the customers wouldn’t even notice any impact.” For more information, call (800) 275-8777 from 5 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Mondays through Fridays and from 5 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturdays, or visit www.usps.gov.