Westbrook’s old post office has come back to life as a new credit union.

Ocean Communities Federal Credit Union will open for business on Monday and hold a week-long grand opening celebration from Oct. 14-18. The building, on William Clarke Drive, was under construction for nearly a year, as workers from Cimino Construction tried to restore it to match the original post office.

“It was pretty beat up,” John Cimino, vice president of the construction company, said about the condition of the long-vacant building when the restoration began.

Donna Conley, president of the Westbrook Historical Society, said the post office was abandoned in the 1970s, during urban renewal.

“I remember what a beautiful building it was on the inside,” she said, especially the mural on the wall of loggers in the woods, which is now in the Portland Museum of Art.

Architect Jim Durgan, of Theriault/Landmann Associates, said he took care to replace the windows to match the original ones and to keep the brick facade and stairs the same, too.

“The whole idea was to keep the building as original as possible,” said Durgan, who worked with the Westbrook Historical Society to match up his design with pictures of the post office from when it was built in the mid-1930s.

“Everyone seems to be pleased with it,” he said.

One of those people is new branch manager Denis Knox.

“It’s absolutely gorgeous,” said Knox, who thinks that the attractiveness of the building will help bring in customers.

He also thinks the location on William Clarke Drive is great advertising, considering the amount of traffic traveling slowly along every morning and afternoon.

The Westbrook branch will be the Biddeford-based company’s sixth, but its first in Cumberland County. Knox said the company was drawn to the city because of the character of its residents, which he described as hardworking and family-oriented. And that fits in with the philosophy of a credit union.

“We’re people helping people. Everybody will know your name when you walk in the door,” he said, as opposed to at a bank where “you’re a number.”

Knox has already started working with other local businesses through a promotional campaign that will both bring customers to those companies and get the word out about the bank.

The bank designed “passports” with coupons to local businesses, like Mister Bagel and Portland Pie Company, which will stamp the booklets when people visit them. Those stamps will act as entries for prizes, from gas cards to Celtics tickets, that will be given away throughout the grand opening.

Reaching out to other local businesses and interacting with residents are, according to Knox, what his company is all about.

“Credit unions speak to the community,” he said.

New life for old post office