"LOWELL — The CVS on Merrimack Street closed its doors on Friday and is transferring all prescriptions to the pharmacy on Bridge Street less than a mile away, according to a company spokesperson.
Multiple city officials told The Sun that the store’s closure came about due to a dispute between the company and the landlord over a lack of improvements being made to the space. The space, the Hildreth Building, is one of the downtown’s iconic buildings.
“We understand the disappointment of our closing store’s neighbors and customers,” CVS Retail Communications Manager Matt Blanchette said. “We are committed to the Lowell area and will continue to provide the community with outstanding service at our other stores nearby.”
Blanchette added that “every effort will be made” to place the store’s employees into comparable roles at other nearby locations.
While Blanchette characterized the store closing simply as a “difficult business decision,” Mayor John Leahy accused CVS of doing it out of corporate greed and said that the company has not been a good neighbor to the city.
“I’m very upset about it. It was a good anchor store downtown and to not really give us much information about it wasn’t the right thing to do,” Leahy said. “You’re supposed to be looking out for your customers and for the people you serve, but apparently they just care about their bottom line.”
News of the store’s closure also came as a serious disappointment to City Councilor Rita Mercier, who said that it is another sign that more and more businesses are leaving the downtown area and that something needs to be done in response.
“What happens in the downtown area trickles out to all the different neighborhoods, and I’m seeing a downtown that is deteriorating and falling apart,” Mercier said. “If I were a person that had an innovative idea and wanted to open up a business downtown, I would be reluctant to do so, because on either side of me there’d be empty storefronts.”
“Before you can correct something you have to admit that there’s a problem,” she added.
However, Director of Economic Development Christine McCall rejected that sentiment, saying that a significant number of businesses opened or expanded during the pandemic, such as Kung Fu Tea on Merrimack Street, Nibbāna Café on Cardinal O’Connell Parkway and Tasty Dumplings on Market Street.
She also noted that Lowell has received $90,000 in grant funding from the state to develop a Rapid Recovery Plan, the purpose of which is to create and implement projects that will help revitalize downtown businesses post-pandemic.
So far, city officials have sent out surveys and hosted a series of meetings with business owners to discuss their goals, which the City Council will discuss at its meeting next week.
“Downtown is not without its challenges and I’m sorry that CVS is leaving, but I still think there’s a lot of great businesses there and there’s still a lot of things for people to do,” McCall said. “I don’t think all hope is lost downtown.”
Several sources told The Sun the CVS decision had nothing to do with the state of the downtown, but rather the dispute with the landlord, an LLC based out of Weston.
Echoing Blanchette’s statement, the sources noted CVS’ commitment to Lowell is more than visible at its new location on Bridge Street, at the intersection with the VFW Highway, and a brand new location in the Wood Street Plaza in the Highlands.
Allison Lamey, executive director of the Lowell Plan and Lowell Development & Financial Corp, said that while she too was disappointed to hear that the CVS was closing, she sees it as an opportunity for the area rather than just a loss.
“I’m hopeful that CVS’s departure means that the current owner might be more eager to sell the building, since they have not really maintained it to the degree that they should,” Lamey said. “I like to see this as an opportunity for someone new to come in and renovate that space, find new tenants and restore it.”
The first storefront CVS, or Consumer Value Store, was opened in 1963 on Merrimack Street by brothers Stanley and Sidney Goldstein and partner Ralph Hoagland." I challenge this fact that the first storefront was on Merrimack Street because I was working nearby and I saw that it opened on Central Street."
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