Disappearing Drugstores: Duane Reade Stores on UES & W.Village Latest to Shut Down

The vanishing drugstores of New York took another hit in recent days.

In the latest retrenchment, two Duane Reade locations are set to close, furthering a recent trend of the Walgreens family of companies shrinking its footprint across Manhattan.

The East 89th Street and Madison Avenue location announced that it will close in mid-March, as first reported by the blog East Side Feed. Meanwhile, a Duane Reade at West 4th Street and Broadway confirmed to Straus News that it was scheduled to close on Tuesday, Feb. 25. It marks one of multiple Walgreens Manhattan locations to close within a four-month period, as the drugstore giant chops its number of outlets nationally.

Other recent closures include one at 27th Street and Second Avenue that shuttered on Jan. 27, and one on 79th Street last November.

A sign posted on the exterior of the East 89th Street store simply informs customers that the store will be “closing permanently March 19, 2025,” a visit there by Straus News on Feb. 20 confirmed. It will lock its doors at 12 p.m. and said it will transfer patients’ prescription info to other locations. The nearest existing Duane Reade location is at East 84th Street and Lexington Avenue, although a closer CVS location can be found at East 87th Street and Lexington.

One customer, Christina, told Straus News that the closure would leave her “highly inconvenienced.” She added that her two children were “apoplectic” about its impending shuttering, given their fondness for “late-night snacks.”

Another woman, who chose to remain unidentified, argued the reverse position: “We have too many drugstores around anyway. I don’t have a problem with it.”

The closures of the borough’s Duane Reade pharmacies have been partially pinned on shoplifting, with one employee of the Second Avenue store that closed last November telling the East Side Feed blog that people are “stealing more than we’re selling.” Indeed, an Our Town reporter who visited that store shortly before it closed witnessed a man engage in a physical confrontation with a manager, before running from the store with rolls of paper towels under his arms.

In a public statement issued after that store shuttered, Walgreens—which acquired Duane Reade’s Manhattan portfolio in 2017—instead cited “increased regulatory and reimbursement pressures” as the main reasons behind the decision. The “reimbursement” in question was reimbursement for medical prescriptions.

Calls to the Walgreens corporate office seeking answers about the latest closures had not been returned by presstime.

“We are making substantial changes to our store footprint, closing stores based on profitability, including this store in New York, which is not able to cover the costs associated with rent, staffing, and supply needs,” the company said at the time.

The extent of retail theft at its stores has been occasionally disputed by Walgreens corporate leadership over the years as well, with Chief Financial Officer James Kehoe notably telling investors that his colleagues had “cried too much” about it in a 2023 earnings call. He also reportedly added that “shrinkage,” the technical industry term for retail losses that encompasses shoplifting, had “stabilized” by then.

Indeed, just last month, Walgreens Boots Alliance CEO Tim Wentworth told investors that certain anti-theft measures—such as locked display cases—appeared to have had a negative impact on sales and revenue in their own right. Last June, Wentworth told the Wall Street Journal that the company would be shuttering a “significant” chunk of its 8,600 stores nationwide, causing the stock price of the publicly traded company to dive.

NYC City Comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander recently unveiled an “Unlock the Toothpaste” initiative that seems to echo these concerns, which would give stores such as Duane Reade a “one-touch system” that puts them in contact with the authorities. In exchange, stores would ostensibly be more inclined to remove certain anti-theft measures.

”We recognize where we are is a turnaround,” Wentworth said at the time. “We recognize that we need to be focused on what are the parts of the business that we believe are contributing and have a future, and some of those [that] need to change.”

Other relatively recent closures of prominent drugstores in the borough have struck the Upper West Side as well. The last Rite Aid in the neighborhood closed in 2023. A Duane Reade shuttered near Lincoln Center that year, too, followed by a CVS on the corner of West 93rd Street, which closed in January 2024.