The Tulsa Forum by TulsaNow

Wasn't sure if I should revive one of the old CVS threads or post a new one, so new one it is....

Anyone know the background on why the CVS at Admiral and Sheridan appears shuttered (plywood covering glass windows/doors)?  It was open pretty recently.  Is this just over-saturation or other reasons?  Not that I shop there often (get my scripts down the street locally at Couch anyway) but just curious.

As a guess, it's over saturation and it's not just CVS it's Walgreens as well. Out here there are several of both that have been closed over the last several years.

Near where I live, there was a Walgreens that opened in 1997 and closed in 2016, and then was bulldozed and turned into a QT version 3 in 2020.

There's a Walgreens location not far from the dealership I work for that was built in the early 2000's that closed in 2017, sat vacant for a couple of years and is now an automotive collision and glass repair shop.

The other thing I notice is that the only ones that seem to do well are the ones with the minute clinics in them, the rest any time I've gone into one, they are just never busy. Even before Christmas they weren't that busy.

I do miss the old time pharmacy. Growing up we always went to Stan's Pharmacy that was in the Sheridan Lanes Bowling Alley building.

https://www.yahoo.com/video/walgreens-cvs-closing-even-more-204838786.html

Just for grins and giggles, I looked up all the national pharmacies within 5 miles (~45 sq miles) of where I live, and there are 62.

Walgreens -18
CVS - 15
Fry's (Kroger) - 12
Walmart - 10
Safeway -7

There's QT stores in a LOT more places than I thought.   https://locations.quiktrip.com 


Complete with a soda/lunch counter? 

Wow, there are more QT stores in Arizona, Georgia, Missouri, and Texas than there are in Oklahoma!  I guess they are pretty much just in the Tulsa area, though I think they have entered (or are entering (https://www.okctalk.com/showthread.php?t=46549)) the OKC metro area recently.

Just travel plazas. Not normal locations.

No, no lunch/soda counter, just your basic pharmacy. But I do have vague memories of a Rexall next to Safeway in the Boman Acres shopping center that did have a soda counter.

As for QT, I was never so glad to see something until QT started opening stores here back around 1999/2000. It wasn't just that it was a part of my growing up, it was the way that they run their stores, and the quality of the employees and the products that I appreciated. I've said before that when QT came to Phoenix they literally forced Circle K to change their business model and their stores.

Back to the original issue about the closed CVS, when I first moved here the major freestanding drug stores were Walgreens and Osco. Osco was building locations to keep up with Walgreens until shortly after Albertsons bought up Jewell/Osco in 1999. There is an old Osco store that is now 23 years old that was closed in the early 2000's, probably around 2002, that has remained boarded up for the last 20 years. A search of the county assessor's site states that it is owned by CVS, but they have never developed it into a store as of this year.

The link is to Google Maps for November of 2022.  https://goo.gl/maps/Ztvrc3ybdhXuKXKr9 (https://goo.gl/maps/Ztvrc3ybdhXuKXKr9)

CVS bought the property 06/01/2006 for $3,600,000.00. Makes you wonder how long you can sit on a property and never do anything with it.

https://mcassessor.maricopa.gov/mcs/?q=304-13-019S (https://mcassessor.maricopa.gov/mcs/?q=304-13-019S)

Like Walmart, QT etc. they often close a saturated location but let it sit to thwart a competitor from moving in and taking business away from  one of their more successful locations.

No argument there. I'm sure there are also tax reasons they hold on to properties as well. The old Osco is just kind of an odd outlier in that area since they bought it four years after they built two locations in 2002 that are roughly two miles northeast and southwest from that location. There are two Walgreens one a mile north built in 1994, and another a mile south built in 1999, which is now across the street from a Target store with a CVS inside.

A couple of years ago I ran into a guy that works for The Town Of Gilbert Development Services and asked him about that building, and he told me that CVS has not put in on the market since they bought it. CVS still regularly maintains the building and the grounds around it and the Fire Dept. does annual inspections and the building could be reopened quite easily since it has been taken care of. He said there have been a number of inquiries but CVS has no plans to sell. He then told me that the only real drawback is that you cannot extend the footprint of the site because along with the city's ROW, SRP, the Salt River Project, the Roosevelt Water Conservation District, RWCD, owns the majority of the ROW for water distribution.

On the corner of the property is an SRP pumping station that delivers water throughout the area through pipelines and open canals that date back to when the area was all agriculture, and RWCD owns the rights going back 100 years.

Most vacant businesses, Walmart/Walgreens/grocery stores don't normally sit too long here. Usually, within at most five years, most places change hands. Even when we went through the grocery market shake up from 2000 to about 2008, vacant stores were quickly converted to other businesses with Goodwill buying or leasing quite a number of them, followed buy Sprout's and other niche' grocers buying or leasing smaller stores.

Where I lived in the north PHX area there was a Walmart that closed when they built a new location along with a Sam's Club a mile west, and within five years WinCo bought it and opened a location. They have done a mix of using closed locations or building new depending on the area. I know of at least one QT location that was one of the Gen 2 stores that close when they built a Gen 3 about a mile away that has now been bulldozed and two seperate places built on the site. Interestingly, there is a Gen 2 QT near me, one mile away built in 2001, and another about three miles away in 2007, and then they built a Gen 3 a half mile from the 2001 location. I felt that when I moved here just before the Gen 3 store opened, that the other two would go away. Five years later they're all still profitable.

On a side not of convenience stores, I have been to one of the oldest 7-11 stores that I know of in Tempe. It has been a 7-11 since it was built in 1963.

The Google street view is from last year before they upgraded the sign.

https://goo.gl/maps/vWbbDM6oX1oAgR8H6 (https://goo.gl/maps/vWbbDM6oX1oAgR8H6)