Needless to say, my reaction to Walgreens drugstore closing five stores next month hasn’t been as passive as some of the elected officials who represent many of the people who will be hurt by the creation of another pharmacy desert. I refuse to let them go quietly into the night without a fight.
The Walgreens locations that are set to close between Feb. 17 and 27 are: 7111 South Western Avenue (West Englewood), 4005 West 26th Street (Little Village), 9148 South Commercial Avenue (South Chicago), 3405 South King Drive (Bronzeville) and 7109 South Jeffery Boulevard (South Shore). They are all in predominantly Black and brown communities.
I live in Bronzeville and the Walgreens in the Lake Meadows Shopping Center has been an anchor store since 1953, when it was built. It’s one of the busiest locations in the city. There’s always a line at checkout in the front of the store and in the back at the pharmacy.
In good times and bad, this store has always been here. I’ve watched it go from having a dining area and soda fountain competing with Woolworth and the Lake Meadows Lounge to a 24/7 store to compete with Alco Drugs, across the boulevard on the southwest corner. The others have long gone, but Walgreens remains as one of the two original tenants.
The reason Walgreens has such a prominent location in the shopping center is also an homage to the drug chain’s beginnings. Charles Walgreen, the son of Swedish immigrants, opened the first pharmacy at the corner of Cottage Grove Avenue & Bowen Street in 1901–only a few blocks away. Although the original location has sat as an empty lot for decades, the Lake Meadows store was a homecoming of sorts.
From its meager beginnings on Chicago’s South Side, the Walgreen Co. grew into one of the largest drug stores in the country–opening its 8,000th store in 2012. Under the leadership of Charles Walgreen III, the company grew into a $13 billion a year business. He retired in 1998. In 2014, it merged with the international company of Alliance Boots, becoming Walgreens Boots Alliance. The two companies were said to have similar histories and values.
Yet, in the last decade, the global company has made a series of disastrous investments and decisions. The most recent was store policy to put products under lock and key to stop shrink–also known as shoplifting. While that may have been acceptable in some Black neighborhoods, it backfired in communities where customers have more choices.
USA Today reported, “Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. CEO Tim Wentworth said in a Jan. 10 call with investment analysts putting more product in locked display cases ‘”does impact how sales work through the store because when you lock things up for example, you don’t sell as many of them. We’ve kind of proven that pretty conclusively.”‘
Although shoplifting and shrink skyrocketed during the COVID years–2020 and 2021–Walgreens reports an increase to $39.5 billion for fiscal quarter ending Nov. 30, 2024, due to pharmacy sales. In a move that was unnecessary, however, the drugstore chain sank $200 million into digital ads on the glass doors of its freezers. Walgreens signed a contract with the company CoolerX to install 45,000 “smart doors” throughout its stores nationally. The investment was a disaster.
Walgreens Boots Alliance was an investor in founder Elizabeth Holmes’ company, Theranos, which promoted a device that could run a battery of medical tests from a finger prick of blood. The chain paid Theranos $140 million and then another $44 million to settle a class-action lawsuit for fraud against Holmes’ company.
Another questionable investment was the drug chain’s partnership with VillageMD. Walgreens owned 53% of the clinic and invested more than $6 billion. It had planned to open 500 to 700 clinics nationally, but had to scale back significantly after operating losses of $13.1 billion in the first nine months of fiscal 2024.
The recent opioid settlement also is impacting the chain’s bottom line. As part of the National Settlements, Walgreens will pay $5.5 billion over 15 years to defendants and state and local governments for future abatement efforts.
I know it’s easy to justify the closing of these five stores by saying, “If the stores aren’t making any money, then they should close.” Of course, the only people saying that are those who aren’t dependent on the stores and have choices.
“It is never an easy decision to close a store. We know that our stores are important to the communities that we serve, and therefore do everything possible to improve the store performance. When closures are necessary, like those here in Chicago, we will work in partnership with community stakeholders to minimize customer disruptions,” said Wentworth in a statement announcing the closings.
If the objective is to “right size” Walgreens to make more money, then I suggest the company should consider closing stores in neighborhoods where there are multiple locations within walking distance of each other. This would prevent creating pharmacy deserts to go along with the existing food deserts.
Given the location of these stores and the customer demographics, most are making money–especially, from the pharmacy. I know the stores in Bronzeville and South Shore have been part of those communities for decades. Now, loyal customers in marginalized communities are being asked to sacrifice their quality of life for the boneheaded decisions Walgreens executives have made over the past decade…and that’s a bitter pill to swallow.
Please sign petition to stop Walgreens from creating more pharmacy deserts.