LA GRANDE — The La Grande Rite Aid store, 2212 Island Ave., is permanently closing its doors Thursday, April 20, the company confirmed in an email on April 10.

“Like all retail businesses, we regularly review each of our locations to ensure we are meeting the needs of our customers, communities and overall business,” Michelle McEnroe, an external communications specialist, said in the email.

Rite Aid, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was founded in 1962 in Scranton, Pennsylvania, by Alex Grass under the name Thrift D Discount Center.

McEnroe did not say how many employees the closure of the La Grande store impacts.

In 2021, Rite Aid announced the closure of at least 63 stores throughout the country and said it was reassessing how many brick-and-mortar locations are needed in the United States. In April 2022, the company announced plans to “significantly reduce costs” by closing a total of 145 unprofitable stores, including the 63 stores that it had already announced for closure the previous December.

“A decision to close a store is one we take very seriously and is based on a variety of factors, including business strategy, lease and rent considerations, local business conditions and viability and store performance,” McEnroe said.

At the end of 2022, Forbes reported that the company was projecting greater losses for its fiscal 2023 than it projected just three months prior and was once again looking at closing more stores.

Rite Aid had 2,324 total stores as of the end of the fiscal 2023 third quarter, in November 2022, according to Forbes.

The closure of Rite Aid leaves La Grande residents with one less option to fill prescriptions.

Red Cross Drug Store and Safeway, both on Adams Avenue, and Walmart, on Island Avenue, are the last remaining pharmacies in La Grande.

“It’s really disappointing. We’re already seeing limitations with the availability of pharmacies,” La Grande City Manager Robert Strope said.

He anticipates there will be an adverse impact on residents of La Grande.

McEnroe said Rite Aid considered access to pharmacies when it made its decisions to close.

“We review every neighborhood to ensure our customers will have access to health services, be it at Rite Aid or a nearby pharmacy, and we work to seamlessly transfer their prescriptions so there is no disruption of services,” she said. “We also strive to transfer associates to other Rite Aid locations where possible.”

Rite Aid has operated in La Grande at its present site since the mid-1990s. It replaced La Grande’s former PayLess Drug Store. Payless had operated there since about 1974, according to La Grande historian Bob Bull. The first PayLess Drug Store opened in La Grande on Adams Avenue in about 1939.

Another pharmacy closes

The looming closure of the La Grande Rite Aid follows the September 2021 closure of the pharmacy at Bi-Mart.

The pharmacy was the casualty of a sale involving the Bi-Mart Corporation and Walgreens, one of the nation’s largest pharmacy chains. Walgreens, as part of the purchase agreement, purchased all of Bi-Mart’s pharmacies. At the time, Walgreens said it would operate many of Bi-Mart’s already existing pharmacies, but not at some stores, which included La Grande.

The closure ended a 34-year run that started in November 1987 when Bi-Mart opened in La Grande.

Bi-Mart said the corporation is getting out of the pharmacy business because it was becoming unfeasible to operate its pharmacies profitably within a chain of stores its size. The statement cited rising prescription medication costs, smaller insurance reimbursements and the new Oregon Corporate Activity Tax among the reasons it is getting harder to run its pharmacies profitably. The statement noted that the CAT, which took effect in 2020, is taxing the corporation not just on profits but also receipts.

Spike in business

Leah Coulter, general manager of Red Cross Drug, anticipates that business will increase significantly when Rite Aid closes.

“We are excited to take care of new customers, we welcome them,” she said. “We look forward to adjusting to the new workflow.”

Coulter said that Red Cross Drug experienced a significant increase in business when La Grande’s Bi-Mart pharmacy closed.

To accommodate the increase in customers following the Bi-Mart pharmacy closure, Coulter said Red Cross’ staff began working night shifts to process prescriptions customers could pick up the next day.

Coulter said one of the reasons that many pharmacies are closing is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to staff them. Strope agreed that staffing has proved to be an issue.

“I known (Rite Aid) had difficulty attracting and retaining pharmacist,” he said.

Coulter notes many people left the traditional workforce during the COVID-19 pandemic, including many who chose to begin working online. A second reason is that many baby boomers are retiring.

Pharmacies are also being hurt, Coulter said, by increasing regulations that call for more time-consuming paperwork.

Coulter said her staff will be working hard to help make it as easy as possible for Rite Aid customers to switch to Red Cross Drug. She said the experience her staff gained in helping customers switch pharmacies after Bi-Mart’s closed will serve it well.

“We have the drill down,” she said.