Federal funding for a $65 million postal distribution facility once wooed by the Twin Cities has been approved.

Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, announced the funding on Tuesday.

The $65 million will pay for land, design and construction of a 428,951-square-foot Postal Service processing and distribution center in Scarborough and the renovation of the existing distribution center in Portland to serve as that city’s post office. The project has been delayed for years.

In the late 1990s, postal officials had largely exhausted sites for the center in southern Maine and began looking farther north. Lewiston and Auburn popped up on their radar.

When that happened, political and business leaders in the Twin Cities began an all-out effort to bring the facility here. Not only did they court postal officials in attempts to curry favor, they sweetened the pot with the promise of financial and other incentives.

The postal officials expressed great interest, and in 1999 made the deal sound like a certainty, only to shun both communities in the end.

The Lewiston site that had been considered for the center is now being developed into a distribution center for Wal-Mart. That $60 million project is expected to produce about 500 jobs, a $12 million annual payroll and $2.7 million annually in state and local taxes.

Snowe said the Scarborough facility will have 760 employees working 20 different shifts. Between it and the Portland post office, the jobs will generate a combined annual payroll of $55 million, she added.