In an email, Alex Brown, a spokesperson for Walgreens, said there have been 16 closings to date this year in New York City. Compare that to less than 10 years ago, when there were 253 branches in the city, according to the New York Times. Prior to that, even a logo change prompted criticism.Īccording to Duane Reade's map locator on its website, there are currently 91 locations in New York City. The stores were such a fixture that in 2010, when Duane Reade, the mega NYC chain, was swallowed up by Walgreens, the mega national chain, people were suddenly racked with anxiety about what the deal would mean and whether the stores would somehow become less New York, and even less neighborhoody. on the Upper West Side or buy milk on a Sunday morning in Bedford-Stuyvesant." For those who came of age in Duane Reade's golden era, it was also the place to hit up for emergency diaper and formula runs. Duane Reade has, for better or worse, managed to establish itself as a begrudgingly appreciated amenity, what an Observer writer once described as "an inevitable retail experience for New Yorkers a place to fill a birth control prescription when drunk at 3 a.m. "Even with Starbucks, it's a more interesting scene."Īt one point, there was both a Facebook page and blog called "I hate Duane Reade."īut as Redlener's comments as well as those on Twitter suggest, New Yorkers have over the years come around. "You're looking at the windows, and you're looking at toilet paper or laundry detergent," he said. They took up the entire block, replacing three or four or five smaller businesses."Īnd they did so with a bland whitewashed retail space that was not particularly appealing to look at, according to Bowles. Jonathan Bowles, the director of Center for an Urban Future, which tracks retail chains in New York City, said the company's rapid expansion, which targeted the avenues and major crosstown streets, fueled animus among New Yorkers. "We're drowning in drugstores,'' Irene Prince, a resident on West 96th Street, complained to the New York Times at the time. In 1992, the brothers cashed out and sold to the Boston private equity firm Bain Capital, which several years later sold a majority stake to an investment bank that took the company public.īy 1999, Duane Reade was New York's largest drug retailer, with 130 locations and reported plans to add 200 more. The store was first founded in 1960 by brothers Abraham, Eli, and Jack Cohen, on Broadway between Duane and Reade streets. One of the strange effects of the city’s ongoing retail vacancy crisis is that the unexpected closure of longstanding chains, once maligned for their overbearing presence, can now trigger feelings of inconvenience, concern, and in some cases, nostalgia.ĭuane Reade has an especially long and complicated history in New York City. The piece was headlined, “As Another Duane Reade Closes, One Local Gets Genuinely Distressed.” While he would not say the closure put him in mourning (“I’ll save that for real mourning,” he said), he was dismayed enough to write an op-ed for the West Side Rag. Mary and Suzanna, the regular pharmacists at the West 97th Street location, kept Redlener's prescriptions in check, but they also offered the kind of "did you hear?" neighborhood banter that made the Duane Reade feel like part of his social circle. There was also the fact, which can be missed given its avalanche of merchandise, that Duane Reade is also a pharmacy. In the case of Duane Reade, which has been shrinking its footprint amid cost-cutting by its parent company Walgreens, there was a comforting physical familiarity that came with the store's brightly-lit aisles that years ago were notorious for being cramped and poorly organized. He had been prepared to leave all that behind, but after eight years of living in the city, he noticed that ironically enough, some of the big chain stores blamed for replacing the mom-and-pops had in some ways become their equivalent. Prior to moving to New York City, Redlener, who works at Columbia University as an expert on children’s health and disaster preparedness, had lived in the burbs of Westchester for 25 years, where he was surrounded by the kind of small shops that become firmly entrenched in the community. A few months ago, when Irwin Redlener learned that his neighborhood Duane Reade on 97th Street and Columbus Avenue was closing, he found himself feeling a sense of loss that he did not expect to have for a corporate mega chain whose headquarters are located in Deerfield, Illinois.
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