6 Rite Aid Stores Closing In NJ; Among 77 Nationwide

NEW JERSEY — Rite Aid plans to close 77 stores nationwide, including several in New Jersey, new court documents show.

Rite Aid plans to close two stores, one in Detroit and another in Marion, Ohio, according to court documents obtained by Patch. The documents were filed Wednesday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey.

The latest closures come after Right Aid earlier said it planned to close 75 stores across 15 states: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Washington. MassLive first reported the closures.

Six New Jersey stores are slated to close. They are:

• 1097 Broadway (Bayonne)
• 1360 Blackwood Clementon Road (Clementon)
• 249 Cuthbert Blvd. (Haddon Township)
• 335 Village Center Dr. (Logan Township)
• 104 12th Ave. (Newark)
• 237 Spring St. (Newton)

The latest spate of closures comes after the struggling drugstore chain filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in October, and announced plans to close 150 stores. Since filing for bankruptcy, Rite Aid has said it will close 431 stores, according to MassLive.

Rite Aid has said its faced falling sales, increasing competition, and mounting debt stemming from opioid-related lawsuits.

The chain said on its website it has 1,704 stores in the United States. That number was about 4,600 in 2013, according to Business Insider. About 2,000 stores were sold to Walgreens in 2017 after a deal to sell the drugstore chain to its rival was nixed by federal regulators.

"Rite Aid regularly assesses its retail footprint to ensure we are operating efficiently while meeting the needs of our customers, communities, associates and overall business," a Rite Aid spokesperson told Business Insider. "In connection with the court-supervised process, we notified the Court of certain underperforming stores we are closing to further reduce rent expense and strengthen overall financial performance."