Controversial CVS Store Folds Following Protests

When the CVS drugstore on 102nd Street and Broadway announced its impending closure only a year after its opening, the residents who had protested its existence said they felt a sense of vindication.

“When you have four drug stores in a two block radius, you cannot have the customer base to sustain them all, so we decided to use our pocketbooks to pick the one that would fail,” said Jock Davenport, neighborhood resident ad co-chairman of Westsiders for a Viable Neighborhood.

 The chain drug store will close at the end of this month, but the fate of its location is still undecided. Some residents said they hope for a grocery store to replace the drug store because CVS bought the lease from Associated Supermarket when it moved into the location last year.

The Westsiders group was concerned about the lack of grocery stores in the area and outraged that they were losing a grocery store in favor of a drug store, something of which Davenport said they already had too many.

Cynthia Doty, co-chair of the Westsiders group, special assistant to State Assemblyman Ed Sullivan, and member of the 102-103rd Street block association, claimed the lack of a viable grocery store in the neighborhood has forced residents “to drive to do real shopping, drive to Fairway on 133rd Street, or even to New Jersey.”

But according to the company that manages CVS’ lease, Seminole Leasing Corporation, the possibility of opening a grocery store in that space is complicated by the fact that CVS is obligated to pay rent until May 31, 2020 under its current lease. Sandy Sirulnick, the group’s manager general, said his company has no intention of releasing them from that obligation, adding that residents’ hopes may be further constrained by a clause in the lease specifying that the space must be used for a “dry store,” or a business that does not process food. Sirulnick said this clause all but rules out the possibility of opening a grocery store or a restaurant there.

As for the possibility of a grocery store opening in another location, Columbia’s Director of Institutional Real Estate Bill Scott said Columbia is doing all that it can to assuage the community’s concerns by reserving space for a grocery store in the K-8 school building under construction at 110th Street and Broadway.

Scott said Columbia simply does not own any other suitable spaces in the neighborhood. He said one of the problems that grocery stores face in this neighborhood is the combination of the large spaces they require and their low profit margins, which makes it hard for them to pay the high rents common to this area. Small stores such as ice cream parlors can usually pay high rents per square foot because they only need a very limited amount of space to operate. Therefore most landowners find it more profitable to divide their retail space into small units.

Davenport claimed the space CVS is currently occupying leases for about 70 dollars a square foot, while traditional grocery stores can usually pay only about 40 dollars per square foot on average. The neighborhood groups may focus their attention on the possibility of luring a luxury grocery store such as Fairway or Gristedes into the neighborhood. Less expensive grocery stores such as Associated Supermarket have been priced out of the market.

When the 102nd St. CVS opened a year ago, members of the community protested the chain’s new location before it opened its doors. They picketed and passed out petitions for the next six month, eventually gathering 4,000 signatures on a petition to boycott CVS. The petition asked residents instead to support Suba Pharmacy, a family-owned pharmacy located on Broadway and 104th Street.

Neighborhood groups have protested what they describe as the encroachment of chain stores upon the area for years. Management at chain stores have responded by saying they are filling commercial space in the neighborhood that may go dark when smaller businesses fail in an economy that has slowed.

Sirulnick said he had his doubts about the neighborhood enthusiasm. “[The residents] may have won the battle but lost the war, because now the space may remain vacant for the remainder of the lease,” Sirulnick said, though he said he doubted the possibility of such an outcome.