One year after its symbolic reopening, the downtown Raleigh CVS will close for good
Fayetteville Street will soon gain another empty storefront when the CVS shuts its doors, a move that claims downtown Raleigh’s only pharmacy.
One year ago, the chain drug store renovated and reopened to much fanfare after being badly damaged when protests over George Floyd’s death turned to rioting and looting in the summer of 2020.
“I’m dang-near doing flips,” Chenetha Eason said at the time the store reopened.
But a sign now posted on the door at 200 Fayetteville Street announces that the story will be closing on March 29. It tells customers their records will be sent to 3501 New Bern Avenue — 4 miles away.
“That store is needed by downtown residents!” tweeted one upset regular, who uses the Twitter handle MeMyselfandI. “This is ridiculous!”
A lifeline for some downtown
Closer pharmacies can be found in the neighborhoods that hug downtown, on Person Street or Glenwood Avenue.
But while the Fayetteville Street CVS is one of the chain’s smaller stores, and it has no parking lot, many of its pharmacy customers walk two blocks from the Sir Walter Apartments, which provides affordable housing for senior citizens.
It is common to see homeless people buy food with spare change, or to stand in line behind pharmacy customers carrying their belongings in multiple plastic bags, fumbling with a variety of ID cards at the counter.
And downtown workers, now in short supply thanks to the pandemic’s work-from-home culture, all knew April Gorski, who has worn the pharmacist’s white coat there since 2005.
“I could tell you a lot of our customers’ first names, and a lot of their birthdays,” she said during the reopening last year. “It was to the point that you could call and I wouldn’t have to look at the computer. I just knew.”
Fayetteville Street departures
A flip through old Raleigh City Directories shows a pharmacy has stood on that downtown corner since at least World War II, mostly as a Walgreen’s.
But with the CVS departure, Raleigh’s main street grows lonelier.
The Kimbrell’s furniture store next door closed a few months into the pandemic, and the Rocket Fizz candy store up the block also stands empty. Tasty 8’s, the gourmet hot dog store across the street, packed up and left three years ago.
Many saw the CVS as a sign of downtown rebounding after the pandemic and protest damage shooed away its crowds.
“We looked around to see what else was in the area and who could do what we do, and the answer was nobody,” said Dana Ray, district leader, last year. “So we had to come back.”
In November, the drug store giant announced it would close 900 stores over three years, CNN reported, responding to “consumer buying patterns.”
On Monday, spokeswoman Amy Thibault said the decision involved local market dynamics, population shifts and a community’s store density, among other factors.
“We’ll continue to provide the community with outstanding service at our 14 remaining locations in Raleigh,” she said.
This story was originally published February 28, 2022 at 2:08 PM.