'It's Just Sad': Drug Store Closures Could Make Some Cleveland Neighborhoods Pharmacy Deserts

When the Rite Aid off West 65th St. and Franklin Boulevard announced earlier this summer it would be closing, a small wave of disappointment fell over Christina Keim and Mark Galit.

Filing and picking up prescriptions would be a bit harder. Grabbing a few pantry items or cleaning supplies would require a 10-minute drive or a 20-minute ride on the 71 bus.

Not, as it'd been for years, a quick dash down the block.

"I mean, I can't tell you the times I walked over there just to grab something like milk, you know," Keim, 46, a dental hygienist, told Scene from Galit's porch off West 65th. "Just anything that we needed at that specific time, you know, that you can't get from Amazon."

But reality is soon to set in. That Rite Aid, like two others in Cleveland and others across Northeast Ohio, will close by the end of September, leaving a void and vacant building where thousands of customers once shopped on the regular.

"It's just sad in general," Keim said.

This is the result, on the ground level, of Pharmaggeddon. Since last fall, big name drug stores—Rite Aid, CVS and Walgreens—have opted to deal with so-called underperforming stores, or bankruptcy in Rite Aid's case, by pulling out of neighborhoods that apparently couldn't make profits. Stores mostly in low-income communities.

In Cleveland, where 20% of residents don't own a car, the implications of corporate slashing have rippling effects on residents who've long relied on them for medications, toiletries or a weekend snack run. Especially for seniors and the disabled.

"It's a huge equity issue," Ward 15 Councilwoman Jenny Spencer, whose ward includes the Franklin Rite Aid, wrote in a statement. "It signals that we’re no longer a fully walkable neighborhood—in a community where many households don’t have access to cars."
And the probability that another chain will come in to scoop up the empty drug store buildings isn't very high -- the closed CVS on Madison, for example, has sat vacant for years. More are about to join the market.

"It's hard, because Cleveland's not really a growth market," Ryan Fisher, senior vice president of CRESCO, told Scene. Fisher chalked the exodus up to plain capitalist decisions. Pharmacies are "simply saying, this location doesn't work for me. I'm either going to not continue on or I'm going to go dark, finish off my lease, and then that will be it."

With six-figure rents at most locations, it would take financial help from the city or some kind of landlord subsidy to get a replacement in most cases.

"Finding somebody else to replace place that rent at that number in Cleveland," Fisher said, "has been difficult."

But the constraints and cold truths of big business mean little to neighbors in the blocks surrounding the Franklin Blvd. Rite Aid, which, as of Thursday, was covered in yellow signs announcing its eminent closure.

The consensus was apparent: certain items purchased after a walk could be bought elsewhere, via prescription delivery services, via Amazon, via other stores. But for many, there's the issue of transportation and access. The nearest pharmacies lie either miles away on Clark or on 117th.

"It's not as convenient anymore," David Heil, 70, said from his front door several houses west of Rite Aid. They have lingering questions: What do we do in a minor emergency? Will there be problems with my medical insurance? "TKTK," he said.

In statements to Scene, the big three pharmacies pointed to economic conditions stemming from the pandemic as reasons for pulling out of selected blocks over the past three, four years.

The three CVS closures in Cuyahoga County this year were, a spokesperson said, due to a reassessment of store needs, of "population shifts, consumer buying patterns, a community's store density." A spokesperson for Walgreens said that a quarter of its 6,500 stores nationwide will close in the next three years because they are "not contributing to our long-term strategy."

And Rite Aid, which confirmed its three recent closures—Clark Ave.'s on August 3, Franklin's on September 8 and Chester Ave.'s on September 15—blamed the same macro issues.

"While we have had to make difficult business decisions over the past several months to improve our business and optimize our retail footprint," a statement to Scene read, "we are committed to becoming financially and operationally healthy."

Subscribe to Cleveland Scene newsletters.

Follow us: Apple News | Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | Or sign up for our RSS Feed