Walgreens stores in Oakland closing

OAKLAND, Calif. - This fall, Walgreens announced it was closing 1,200 stores nationwide, and now, individual stores are reporting that they're closing their doors.

In Oakland, customers received notice that the Walgreens at 3434 High Street is closing on Jan. 22 and the Walgreens at 5809 Foothill Blvd is closing Jan. 30. 

Prescriptions from both closed stores will be transferred to the Walgreens at 3232 Foothill Boulevard. 

Walgreens spokeswoman Samantha Stansberry said many reasons are behind the closures, including increased regulatory and reimbursement pressures that are "weighing on our ability to cover the costs associated with rent, staffing, and supply needs."

Stansberry said that Walgreens is trying to find employees other jobs. 

Leonard Mercer, who was picking up a prescription on Tuesday, said he's been a longtime, dedicated customer of the High Street location, which is routinely boarded up after robberies and often suffers from lack of inventory.

"I'm very, very sad," Mercer said, adding that this has been his drug store since 1974. 

Mercer said he'd have to find another Walgreens to go to, which will be inconvenient, but he has no choice.

Bare shelves at the Walgreens on High Street. 

"I need my meds," he said. The Oaklandside  reported that five other Walgreens locations in Oakland will remain open: 3232 Foothill Boulevard, 3250 Lakeshore Avenue, 301 E18th Street, 1333 Broadway, and 5055 Telegraph Avenue.

Stansberry did not provide a list of any other Bay Area stores on the closure list. 

At the same time, new research shows a significant number of drugstores in the United States have gone out of business in recent years.

A study published in Health Affairs found about 30% of drugstores that were open between 2010 and 2020 closed by 2021.

That's more than 26,000 stores out of the roughly 89,000 that were in business during that time.

Researchers also found drugstores that served numbers of people on medicare and Medicaid had a greater chance of closing.

Drugstores have been dealing with higher costs for drugs while reimbursements have remained steady or decreased.

"It is never an easy decision to close a store," Stansberry said in an email to KTVU. "We know that our stores are important to the communities that we serve, and therefore do everything possible to improve the store's performance."