Walgreens closing- Chicago 1601 N Milwaukee Ave

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storewanderer
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Walgreens closing- Chicago 1601 N Milwaukee Ave

Post by storewanderer »

This is one of those flagship stores, in an old bank building. Very nice store. Significant elements of the old bank were integrated into the store.

The store is closing in January.

This store was much too big for Walgreens anyway. It had merchandise on 3 floors, escalators, elevators. No clue how much money they spent on this. The store opened in December 2012. Walgreens really went off the rails in 2012.

There is another Walgreens at 1372 N. Milwaukee also. This location looks older and it is interesting it was not replaced when 1601 N. Milwaukee opened, but I suppose that is good now it is still there.

Also another Walgreeens at 2001 N. Milwaukee, open 24 hours, tough to tell age on this one, but has cement floors, so probably newer.
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Re: Walgreens closing- Chicago 1601 N Milwaukee Ave

Post by rwsandiego »

storewanderer wrote: December 30th, 2022, 12:16 am This is one of those flagship stores, in an old bank building. Very nice store. Significant elements of the old bank were integrated into the store.

The store is closing in January.

This store was much too big for Walgreens anyway. It had merchandise on 3 floors, escalators, elevators. No clue how much money they spent on this. The store opened in December 2012. Walgreens really went off the rails in 2012.

There is another Walgreens at 1372 N. Milwaukee also. This location looks older and it is interesting it was not replaced when 1601 N. Milwaukee opened, but I suppose that is good now it is still there.

Also another Walgreeens at 2001 N. Milwaukee, open 24 hours, tough to tell age on this one, but has cement floors, so probably newer.
1372 Milwaukee has been a Walgreens for decades. It was a Del Farm, National's discount-ish format. In 1973, National re-branded it to National. In 1976, National pulled out of Chicago and sold the store to A&P. I don't remember whether A&P closed the store before their exit from the Chicago market in 1982. Regardless, the store became a Walgreens after A&P closed it.

2001 N Milwaukee is a recently-built store. Like 1601 Milwaukee, it is across from a busy 'L' station (Western Avenue) and on three major streets (Western, Milwaukee, and Armitage avenues) each of which has a bus line. It is a pretty standard Walgreens.

1601 Milwaukee harkened back to the type of stores they had in downtown Chicago years ago, such as Randolph and State, which is still there albeit in a new building, and State and Madison, which is no longer there. I was surprised when they chose Wicker Park as the location for the flagship. There are other options for prepared food and grocery items nearby. There are a couple of co-ops plus a Jewel-Osco a half mile away at Division and Milwaukee, an Aldi, and a plethora of cafes and restaurants. If they wanted to open a flagship in a neighborhood a better location would have been Belmont and Sheffield, across from the Belmont 'L.'. There are fewer options nearby.
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Re: Walgreens closing- Chicago 1601 N Milwaukee Ave

Post by storewanderer »

The flagship looks great, my guess is previous management didn't care about profit, this was someone's pet project to have a store in this historical building. Now it is about 10 years old and it is closing. Probably renewed the 10 years lease for a few months and is bolting. Someone else back in 2012 who makes operational decisions on relocations/store closures knew this store wasn't viable so they kept the old one down the road open and then built another new one down the road in more "typical" building types/sizes for Walgreens.
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Re: Walgreens closing- Chicago 1601 N Milwaukee Ave

Post by buckguy »

rwsandiego wrote: December 30th, 2022, 7:01 pm
storewanderer wrote: December 30th, 2022, 12:16 am This is one of those flagship stores, in an old bank building. Very nice store. Significant elements of the old bank were integrated into the store.

The store is closing in January.

This store was much too big for Walgreens anyway. It had merchandise on 3 floors, escalators, elevators. No clue how much money they spent on this. The store opened in December 2012. Walgreens really went off the rails in 2012.

There is another Walgreens at 1372 N. Milwaukee also. This location looks older and it is interesting it was not replaced when 1601 N. Milwaukee opened, but I suppose that is good now it is still there.

Also another Walgreeens at 2001 N. Milwaukee, open 24 hours, tough to tell age on this one, but has cement floors, so probably newer.
1372 Milwaukee has been a Walgreens for decades. It was a Del Farm, National's discount-ish format. In 1973, National re-branded it to National. In 1976, National pulled out of Chicago and sold the store to A&P. I don't remember whether A&P closed the store before their exit from the Chicago market in 1982. Regardless, the store became a Walgreens after A&P closed it.

2001 N Milwaukee is a recently-built store. Like 1601 Milwaukee, it is across from a busy 'L' station (Western Avenue) and on three major streets (Western, Milwaukee, and Armitage avenues) each of which has a bus line. It is a pretty standard Walgreens.

1601 Milwaukee harkened back to the type of stores they had in downtown Chicago years ago, such as Randolph and State, which is still there albeit in a new building, and State and Madison, which is no longer there. I was surprised when they chose Wicker Park as the location for the flagship. There are other options for prepared food and grocery items nearby. There are a couple of co-ops plus a Jewel-Osco a half mile away at Division and Milwaukee, an Aldi, and a plethora of cafes and restaurants. If they wanted to open a flagship in a neighborhood a better location would have been Belmont and Sheffield, across from the Belmont 'L.'. There are fewer options nearby.
There actually are even more Walgreens in and around the Wicker Park area. That area was supposed to be the next big thing for a long time and then finally took off--it may have benefited from proximity to the big box retail that developed along Clybourne, across the river. Apart from the size of this store, the density of locations is not unlike what you'd find with CVS in DC in areas with fairly similar residential densities (I have 6 within a 10-15 min walk) or elsewhere in Chicago, especially in the denser areas near the lakefront. This area once was one of the most important neighborhood retail districts in the city, anchored by Wieboldt's, and there is still a lot of retail activity along there.

I think Walgreen's still has a flagship-type store on N Michigan around Grand or Ohio. It had the rotary entrance gate long after they'd taken those out elsewhere---it's a great location for the tourist trade (lots of nearby hotels) and complements the higher end retail in the area. In the past, they also had more differentiation among the neighborhood stores---they had 3 stores in Lakeview (and still do)---2 were in old Nationals and one was obviously a long standing store on a major corner. One had a large liquor department (the corner store--Belmont and Broadway), one had a small parking lot and more in the way of general merch (Diversey) and one ran head to head with a small Jewel-Osco (still there) and a popular (now gone) indie, being more of a real drug store than Osco.

Lakeview peaked some time ago and I'm not so sure that a flagship would have worked there---it is more of a 24 hour neighborhood than Wicker Park, but it has plenty of places that would overlap.
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