Nearly 10% of New York City's drugstores have closed this year. The dramatic drop follows a decade of withdrawals that saw the number of drugstores drop by 40% as shoplifting remains rampant, an explosive study has revealed.
The number of Walgreens, Duane Reade, CVS and Rite Aid stores in the city will drop to 395 by 2024, according to the Center for Urban Futures' annual report. This is a significant decrease from the peak of 656 stores in 2014, compared to 435 stores last year. of the title “Chain condition””
Walgreens Boots Alliance, which owns Duane Reade, was hit the hardest. The Big Apple's largest chain closed 22 stores, leaving 189 stores in the city, according to the report.
Meanwhile, CVS closed 10 stores, leaving 160 stores remaining. Rite Aid, which filed for bankruptcy protection last year, closed eight stores this year, leaving only 46 stores open in the city.
The victims included two large Duane Reade stores this spring, one at 4 Times Square and the other at the corner of Broadway and West 50th Street. That comes after the 16,200-square-foot Walgreens flagship store at One Times Square closes in 2022 after weathering the depths of the pandemic.
Also in 2022, the Rite Aid at 8th Avenue and West 50th Street will close. It is currently being redeveloped into a small Whole Foods store.
Experts blame not only crime but also increased security measures at drugstores. Most notably, they lock products behind plexiglass and keep store staff waiting on customers' phones for everything from shampoo to painkillers.
To avoid hassle, shoppers are skipping drugstores altogether and buying more essentials online.
Jonathan Bowles, executive director of the Center for Urban Futures, said: “There's no question that locking up merchandise, moving to automatic checkout, and fewer people working in stores are contributing to fewer people going to stores.'' No,” he told the Post. .
“More New Yorkers can now buy this product online, but when you actually go into these stores, fewer people are working there and things are locked up.”
Further closures are likely. CVS, which operates 9,000 stores nationwide, announced in 2021 that it will close 900 stores over the next few years.
Asked about the recent shutter closures, a CVS spokesperson told the Post, “Decisions are not made solely based on shoplifting or crime.”
“Many factors are considered when closing a store, including population changes, consumer purchasing patterns, store and pharmacy density, access to pharmacy care, and local medical needs,” a spokesperson said. added.
A Rite Aid spokesperson said: “Like many in the industry, we are seeing higher levels of brazen shoplifting and organized retail crime. In addition to playing an active role in helping track them down, we continue to educate community leaders about the impact of retail theft and advocate for solutions.”
In fact, Bowles says the drugstore exodus is wreaking havoc on the streets of the Big Apple.
“There was graffiti on vacant store buildings and homeless people who decided to sleep there.” [by the entrance] “This is not healthy for our retail industry because there are no active stores there,” Bowles said.
Walgreens Boots Alliance announced in October that it plans to close 500 stores in 2025, for a total of 1,200 stores over the next three years.
The Chicago-based pharmacy chain, which has about 8,700 stores across the U.S., said a quarter of its stores are unprofitable and it aims to “improve the in-store experience for our customers.”
A Walgreens representative told the Post that the closures were due to increased “regulatory and reimbursement pressures,” which “weighed on our ability to cover costs related to rent, staffing and supply needs.” “There is,” he said.
Although the company did not directly link store closures to crime, executives said in an earnings call that “shrinking” (corporate term for theft) “represents a serious systemic problem in the retail industry as a whole.” .
Big Apple drugstores have been particularly hard hit by the crime wave that accelerated with the onset of the 2020 pandemic.
Closed drugstores account for a “large share of New York City's vacancy rate,” Bowles added. This is because there is low demand for the large spaces normally occupied by closed drugstores. According to the New York Times, drugstore space totals 1 million square feet by some standards. report In August.
“A few years ago, I thought there were too many drugstores on almost every block,” said Tom Harris, president of the Times Square Alliance, a nonprofit group promoting development in the area. “But when the pendulum swings too far in one direction, it swings back.”
