Multi-Level Walgreens Store At Diversey, Clark, Broadway To Close Along With Jeffery Manor Store
CHICAGO (CBS) -- The multi-level Walgreens store at the five-corner junction of Diversey Parkway, Clark Street, and Broadway will be closing next month – about six years after opening to much fanfare.
Also closing is a Walgreens store at 2011 E. 95th St., at Jeffery Avenue in the Jeffery Manor community. That closure has already drawn frustration and outrage in the neighborhood.
Walgreens spokesman Phil Caruso confirmed to CBS 2 that the store at 2817 N. Clark St. in the East Lakeview community will close on Nov. 14.
Prescription files will transfer automatically to the Walgreens store at 740 W. Diversey Pkwy., at the northeast corner of Diversey Parkway and Halsted Street. Customers will receive a letter in the mail with details.
Meanwhile, Caruso said the Jeffery Manor store will close on Nov. 11.
Prescription records for that store will transfer automatically to the Walgreens at 1616 E. 87th St., and customers will receive a letter.
The closures are part of a plan by Walgreens for a "cost transformation program" that will involve the closure of about 200 stores altogether. That plan was announced in August.
The Diversey-Clark-Broadway Walgreens opened in December 2013, though plans for it were announced two years before that. The "Well Experience" store had more features than traditional drugstores – including expanded food and liquor selections, a "Look Boutique" cosmetics department with manicures and pedicures available, and a pharmacy with nurse practitioners available onsite, according to published reports at the time.
But in a May 2017 column, Chicago Business Journal reporter Lewis Lazare reported that the store had apparently scaled back, with frozen yogurt machines removed and packaged snacks replacing fresh-baked goods on some of the shelves.
Plans for the store were first announced in late November 2011, in a space that had been occupied for 16 years by a Borders bookstore. The Borders store closed in April 2011, shortly before the entire company went out of business.
Before the Walgreens took its place, the Borders space reopened seasonally as a popup Halloween costume store.
The Borders store in turn opened in early 1995. Before Borders moved in, the space was occupied by a popular Great Ace hardware store.
When the Walgreens opened in the space in 2013, a smaller Walgreens drugstore that had been in business for many years across the street at 2801 N. Broadway in turn closed. Aside from also occasionally reopening as a popup Halloween costume store, the Broadway space has been vacant ever since.
The Jeffery Manor Walgreens is also a large store, but of a more traditional single-story layout with a parking lot in front. Plans for its closure has left customers and residents frustrated, according to a published report.
The outrage to the closure prompted Ald. Greg Mitchell (7th) to call a community meeting, Block Club Chicago reported. One resident told the publication that while going to Walgreens had only required a five-minute walk, it would now require a drive to the 87th Street store or another store at 9148 S. Commercial Ave.
The 95th Street Walgreens closure comes about a year after Target closed stores in Chatham and Morgan Park – prompting protests and a Black Friday boycott. U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) complained at the time that Target was opening two new North Side stores at the same time.
Ald. Roderick Sawyer (6th) also complained at the time, "Those were the two South Side 'black' targets in the city of Chicago and they're both leaving."
Following those Target closures last year, then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel signed an executive order requiring developers getting funds from Tax Increment Financing districts to open new stores to promise they won't close other stores elsewhere in the city, Block Club Chicago reported.
CBS 2 Web Producer Adam Harrington contributed to this report.