Upper East Side CVS Set To Close In May, Company Says

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — Another chain pharmacy on the Upper East Side is about to bite the dust.

The CVS at 1241 Lexington Ave., near East 84th Street, will permanently close in May, according to the company.

The store's last day will be May 16, a spokesperson tells Patch.

Spokesperson Amy Thibault called closing the location a "difficult decision," in a standard response nearly identical to ones sent to Patch following the closure of a Lenox Hill CVS in September, and of an Upper West Side location in January.

The main difference between the statements is that since the last one sent to Patch at the end of January, the remaining number of CVS Pharmacies in Manhattan changed from "over 60" to "nearly 60."

Last November, the store was the site of a frightening incident where a hammer-wielding man sliced a person's hand and smashed several windows outside of the shop.

Some Upper East Siders have taken the loss hard, with one using an expletive in reaction to the news of the mega-chain's closure.

"F---!!!" said Andrew Fine, a real estate broker and Vice President of the East 86th Street Association, in a social media post which cited the November window-smashing incident. "I'm angry."

Prescriptions will shift to a CVS three blocks up Lexington Avenue, at East 87th Street, Thibault said, who added that employees at the to-be shuttered store will be offered new jobs with the company.

Additionally, shoppers can satisfy their mega-chain pharmacy needs by visiting the even-closer Duane Reade/Walgreens just across the street from the to-be shuttered CVS.

Just a block south from the doomed CVS, on East 83rd Street, sits longtime local neighborhood pharmacy, Caligor Pharmacy.

Thibault cited "local market dynamics, population shifts, a community’s store density, and ensuring there are other geographic access points to meet the needs of the community," as main factors leading to the store's closure. The company does not cite theft as a cause for the store's closure.

Many have criticized the overuse of theft and shoplifting as a scapegoat for other business and market changes which they argue has made the hyper-saturation of convenience store pharmacies unsustainable.

Notably, Rite Aid and Walgreens often cited theft as the cause behind their recent store closures.

But in a 2023 earnings call, a Walgreens finance chief stated that their reaction may have been out of proportion to the reality.

“Maybe we cried too much last year,” James Kehoe said in the call, according to CNN. Shrink — or merchandise losses from theft, fraud, damages and other causes — actually fell from 3.5 percent to 2.5 percent in that reporting quarter.

In 2021, CVS Health announced plans to close 900 stores nationwide — about 10 percent of their retail operations — in response to changing consumer patterns, ABC reported.

A retail analyst said that the closures come from "too many overlapping locations," and that poor conditions at many stores has "pushed some of them into the downward spiral of irrelevance," ABC reported.