Three post offices in Buffalo and Lackawanna will be spared from closure, at least in the short term.

The Mid-city Station at 1245 Main St., the Broadway-Fillmore Station at 1035 Broadway and the Lackawanna Branch at 683 Ridge Road have been removed from a national list of post offices being reviewed for potential shutdown.

The U. S. Postal Service will make a formal announcement Friday about the revised list, a list that no longer includes any postal facilities in the Buffalo area, said Karen Mazurkiewicz, district spokeswoman for the Postal Service.

Instead, the Postal Service will look for ways to save money by consolidating “backroom” operations that could involve the relocation of some letter carriers.

In September, the Postal Service removed the Kenmore Branch at 3014 Delaware Ave. from consideration for potential closure.

Tuesday’s news about the three remaining local post offices being removed from the list came as a relief to activists who have been fighting to prevent their shutdowns.

Eddie Dobosiewicz, an East Side activist, said closing the Broadway- Fillmore Station, which is near the Broadway Market, would be a setback for current efforts to revitalize the struggling neighborhood.

“To pull the post office out now at this stage of the game would be the death knell,” he said.

Rep. Brian Higgins, D-Buffalo, launched a fight to spare the Lackawanna branch from

closure. Higgins hailed the decision as a victory for local residents.

"Closing the only post office in the city of Lackawanna was a bad idea that unfairly

affects residents in this urban area and is particularly burdensome on local senior citizens,"

Higgins said in a written statement released today.

While the reprieve came as welcome news to community leaders, Mazurkiewicz stressed that the Postal Service still may consider closing some local facilities in the future.

“We don’t know what our financial situation is going to look like in the upcoming year, or what our customers’ habits are going to look like,” she said.

Closure of post offices have been considered nationwide in response to a jolting decline in mail deliveries. The Postal Service has been grappling with a projected $3.8 billion deficit for 2009 as the recession, increasing use of e-mail and heightened competition from private carriers have caused continuing financial pressures.

Buffalo Common Council President David

A. Franczyk called the decision to spare the Broadway-Fillmore Station from closure “delightful” news. He had led a lobbying effort to keep it open and had discussions with Rep. Louise M. Slaughter, DFairport, and district postal officials.

“But we have to stay vigilant in future years,” Franczyk said. “One battle at a time.”

Earlier Tuesday, the Council’s Community Development Committee heard from numerous speakers who expressed opposition to the closing of the Broadway-Fillmore Station. They cited statistics indicating that nearly 80 percent of the residents living in the impoverished neighborhood do not own vehicles.

The small retail operation on Broadway has one full-time staff member and does not have letter carriers working out of its facility.