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Yet another Upper East Side Duane Reade will soon be closing its doors, according to signage spotted on the storefront as well as a notice on the location’s website. The drugstore, located at 1191 Second Avenue (between 62nd and 63rd streets), is closing permanently on June 24.
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“We’re sorry for any inconvenience this may cause,” Walgreens wrote in a statement online (Walgreens acquired all Duane Reade stores in New York in 2010).
A store employee told East Side Feed that prescriptions are being moved to the Duane Reade at 1111 Third Avenue (between 65th and 66th streets).
The news came as media group Nexstar announced last week that dozens of Walgreens locations across the country were preparing to close in the coming weeks, including three in New York State.
Initially, the report mentioned a Manhattan location on Lexington Avenue closing, though that store has since been removed from the list and amended in a correction. Out of the three other locations listed, one is in New York City; that location, on 5th Avenue in Brooklyn, closed down earlier this week, according to PIX11.
Oddly, the location at 1191 Second Avenue is not included on the revised list. East Side Feed has reached out to Walgreens Boots Alliance—the family of companies that includes Duane Reade—for clarification on the matter, but has yet to hear back.
Back in October, Walgreens announced that it was shuttering more than a thousand stores nationwide over the next three years in an effort to reorganize its business.
“Fiscal 2025 will be an important rebasing year as we advance our strategy to drive value creation,” Walgreens Boots Alliance CEO Tim Wentworth said in a statement released October 15. “This turnaround will take time, but we are confident it will yield significant financial and consumer benefits over the long term.”
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The Upper East Side has seen two Duane Reade locations close over the last seven months: the location at 1231 Madison Avenue (on the corner of 89th Street) permanently shut down on March 19, while the Duane Reade at 1524 Second Avenue (on the corner of 79th Street) closed down last November.
Here’s a statement we got from Walgreens:
“We will continue to execute our previously announced turnaround plan to stabilize our retail pharmacy operations, which includes our store footprint optimization program. It is never an easy decision to close a store, and we know how important they are to the communities we serve and therefore do everything possible to improve their performance. However, increased regulatory and reimbursement pressures are weighing on our ability to cover the costs associated with rent, staffing, and supply needs. When closures are necessary, we will work in partnership with community stakeholders to minimize customer disruptions.”
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I’m not clear why so many drug stores opened in the first place. I guess the thinking was in our pharmacology-based culture, there’d be steady traffic to buy other (overpriced) items.
It was perfectly clear when it was happening 20-25 years ago, and at least some of the companies admitted it. They overexpanded to keep their competitors from expanding near them. Any suitable large space was taken over by the drugstores, and supermarkets were outbid for those spaces.
Our neighborhood is very, very sad!