By Rick Madewell
Assistant Editor

A short but very significant era came to an end Friday afternoon when the downtown Kissimmee contract postal unit on Broadway mailed its last package.

Randy and Rebecca Littlefield, operators of the small unit that has been a convenience for residents and businesses in the downtown area, closed for good at 5:30 p.m. Friday. The problem, they said, was the economy.

“Because of the economy, we’re just not able to work things out anymore,” Rebecca said earlier this week. “We’ve tried to find an investor but everything, like the economy, has been working against it.”

The Littlefields had run the postal unit — inside a store that also offered candies and jewelry — at 404 Broadway since September of 2008, first in the back area of the store before moving it up to the front, Broadway-side, in March of 2009.

“We’ve put a lot of time and work into it,” Rebecca said. “We hate to let our customers down because we know the downtown needs it, but we can’t continue to operate without capitalization to carry the postal load.”

While the Littlefields were operators of the postal unit, Randy’s brother, Ross, of Littlefield Enterprises, owns it. Ross said very recently that a few potential purchasers have shown interest and, should a deal be made, the unit could reopen within a month.

The couple said they made their minds up about a week ago to close it down after seeing a decline in customers because of the economy and the Internet. Even though they could see a decline, Randy said between 200 and 300 people typically came through the door every day.

According to the Littlefields, the nearest post office to their downtown operation is about two miles away, on Oak Street, with another one a little farther away on Michigan Street.

A regular customer inside the mail-candy-jewelry business told Rebecca, “It’s just breaking my heart that you’re closing.”

“It’s not a business that you want to close down,” Randy said. “You develop a lot of friendships and business from the post office.”

Before moving to Florida and running the postal unit, Randy was in construction in Virginia while his wife worked in retail management. Now, the couple will be giving much more attention to an online business that specializes in and sells heirloom estate jewelry and antiques. The site, Grandmother’s Trunk, can be found at www.rubylane.com/shops/

grandmothers-trunk.

Randy said he also would take the jewelry and antique business on the road to special events, such as area farmers’ markets and the Corn Festival in Zellwood.