Timothy Hooper works with the senior population at Roosevelt Tower in North Lawndale, which is located across the street from a Walgreens set to close in November. He said a few of the seniors attend community meetings and are heavily involved in churches, but they’d only heard rumors about the drugstore closing soon.
Hooper didn’t find out that the rumors were true until Ald. Monique Scott (24th Ward) posted about the closing on her Instagram page on Sept. 16.
On Nov. 12, the Walgreens at 3401 W. Roosevelt Rd. in North Lawndale will close its doors. In her post caption, Scott wrote that the closure will impact residents, seniors and local clinics. “I’m currently working with other elected officials to find solutions. Stay tuned for updates,” she added.
“I just didn’t believe that that would be a store that they would close. It plays a very pivotal part in the neighborhood,” said Hooper, who is the co-founder and chief operating officer of the West Side-based nonprofit Hojo Family Assistance Program.
The Roosevelt Tower apartment complex at 3440 W. Roosevelt Rd. is an apartment complex that houses residents aged 62 and older. Hooper said he worries for the seniors who live there who frequent the Walgreens to fill their prescriptions.
The TRiiBE reached out to Scott but did not receive a response about any updates or plans to replace the pharmacy. Many social media users expressed discontent under Scott’s posts on Instagram and Facebook alike.
“With them being up in age, during the summer season is pretty cool. But during the winter, when there’s snow out, mobility is a little hindered and so being able to just kind of travel right across the street to get goods and items and especially medications, has always been something that they kind of took advantage of,” Hooper said.
No signs alerting customers of the closure had been posted at the Walgreens as of publishing time. The manager of the location said they have not yet been alerted by Walgreens about the company’s plans for their relocation.
While walking into the busy Walgreens store where customers went in and out nonstop, 63-year-old Sondra Mason said she had not heard that the location would be closing until alerted by The TRiiBE. She said she has been going to the store for at least the past 10 years and wasn’t sure where she would go to get her prescriptions filled.
“I get my medicine here, I come here to get tissue, my little knick-knacks,” Mason said.
In an emailed statement to The TRiiBE, a Walgreens corporate spokesperson said the closure is due to the chain being unable “to cover the costs associated with staffing and supply needs” at the location, which the drug store says has led to them “making substantial changes to our store footprint, closing stores based on profitability.”
In the rest of the statement, the spokesperson said, “Our retail pharmacy business is central to our go-forward business strategy. However, increased regulatory and reimbursement pressures are weighing on our ability to serve our patients profitably. We’ve reached a point where the current pharmacy model is not sustainable and the challenges in our operating environment require that we approach the market differently.”
Under Scott’s social media posts, some users expressed concerns that the Walgreens building may sit dormant for years to come while others said they were expecting the closure due to the number of thefts that occur at the location.
“I was not shocked when I found out that it would be this one, only because I’ve been in this area for a long time, so I’ve seen the change in productivity in that store,” Sonya Jackson told The TRiiBE. She is a longtime North Lawndale resident who lives within walking distance from the closing Walgreens. She also posted on social media about how she believes that multiple factors led to the store’s demise, including the “riots and looting” that took place at the store during the 2020 uprisings following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minn.
Jackson said she worked at Walgreens while attending college and is familiar with how operations work. She said it was her experience in retail that made her suspect a closure was lingering as she has seen an increase in theft at the Walgreens location and has personally called the company’s corporate offices to give security suggestions.
“I’ve also seen the change in how things slowly began to be locked behind that plastic barricade so that you had to call to have somebody come and open up the plastic to get certain items. And that wasn’t there when the store first opened,” Jackson said.
The recent Walgreens closures are part of the chain’s strategy to close nearly 9,000 stores they deem unprofitable. Late last year, a Walgreens on the Far South Side in West Roseland announced it would close its doors to save on costs. The location on 115th and Halsted has sat empty since the retailer fled the location.
A recent investigation by Block Club Chicago showed that an increased closing of drugstores mainly impacts marginalized communities like Black neighborhoods where pharmacies are already limited.
Within a five-minute drive — and 20-minute walk — from Roosevelt Tower is Del-Kar Pharmacy, a Black-owned drug store in North Lawndale at 3726 W.16th St., which has been a pillar in the community since the 1960s. It’s one of the closest alternate options to the senior building.
Hooper says Hojo is currently working on a solution to cover the pharmacy gap by sending volunteers to pick up prescriptions at various pharmacy locations the seniors at Roosevelt Tower may not be able or willing to travel to.
“Just coming up with, like, a twice-a-day kind of prescription run deal or weekly programming to make sure that the seniors are able to get to these places,” Hooper said. “I’ve been reaching out to Uber to see if maybe we could get some type of community vouchers where I would be able to order [seniors] Ubers to the closest CVS or the Jewel Osco pharmacy, or the closest Walgreens.”
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