BROOKLYN HEIGHTS — Walgreens pharmacy in Brooklyn Heights, at 16 Court St. and Montague Street, will be closing permanently on March 24, store staff told the Brooklyn Eagle.
The store’s shelves are emptying, and many items have been placed on sale. Staff members, many of whom have worked at Walgreens for years, said the company plans to offer most of them jobs at other locations, but has not told them where yet. The pharmacy’s prescription records have been transferred to a Walgreens at 120 Court St. and Atlantic Avenue, and the next closest location is 386 Fulton St. in Downtown Brooklyn.
“It’s going to be a little harder for some of the seniors,” one employee said.
The closing is one of 500 planned for this year, and part of roughly 1,200 over the next three years. According to Yelp, the Walgreens located at 1409 Avenue J in Midwood has also closed. The property is available for lease, JLL Property says.
According to Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc. (the company’s corporate name), a combination of factors contributed to the closings, including Walgreens’ legal settlement payouts over the company’s role in the opioid crisis and declining profitability from drug reimbursement rates by insurance companies.
“Our retail pharmacy business is central to our go-forward business strategy,” a Walgreen’s spokesperson told the Brooklyn Eagle on Monday. “However, increased regulatory and reimbursement pressures are weighing on our ability to cover the costs associated with rent, staffing and supply needs.
“It is never an easy decision to close a store,” the spokesperson added. “We know that our stores are important to the communities that we serve, and therefore do everything possible to improve the store performance. When closures are necessary, like the one in Brooklyn, we will work in partnership with community stakeholders to minimize customer disruptions. We intend to redeploy the majority of our team members from those stores that we close.”
In 2022, New York Attorney General Letitia James co-led a multi-state coalition of attorneys general in negotiating the settlement, which will provide $10.7 billion to communities nationwide and will require significant improvements in how Walgreens and CVS handle opioid prescriptions. Walgreens agreed to pay $5.7 billion over 15 years; CVS is paying $5 billion over 10 years. The payments started in 2023 and are being used to combat the opioid crisis in New York and elsewhere. New York will receive roughly $458 million as its share.
Walgreens’ financial statement for the first quarter of fiscal 2025 also pointed to a decline in the U.S. Retail Pharmacy sector, a higher adjusted effective tax rate, and lower contributions from sale-leaseback and Cencora earnings. Cencora is a wholesale pharmaceutical and research company with legal issues related to the opioid lawsuit.
Chief Executive Officer Tim Wentworth said 2025’s priorities include stabilizing the retail pharmacy by “optimizing our footprint,” controlling operating costs, improving cash flow and continuing to address reimbursement models.”
This story was updated with a comment from a Walgreens’ spokesperson on Monday, Feb. 24. The spokesperson added that the corporation’s equity investment in China played no role in the decision to close U.S. stores.
