Due to the recent departure of the Eckerd store from the edge of East Campus, freshmen students looking to get their prescriptions filled currently face an inconvenient trek.
The store moved down Broad Street from the intersection with Markham Street to the intersection with Guess Road.
Though Ninth Street has two drug stores, Kerr Drug and McDonald's, both have closed their pharmacies. Thus, the option nearest to East Campus is Eckerd's new location, less than a mile away.
The store was moved to a free-standing unit Oct. 10. Tami Alderman, corporate spokesperson for Eckerd, explained that such units are not associated with a shopping center and therefore offer customers greater visibility, accessibility and convenience.
The new location is also larger and can accommodate a one-hour photo lab, a drive-through pharmacy window and a food mart.
The entire staff of the old Eckerd has been retained and no new hires were made, said store manager Daniel Hill.
Although Alderman said that the same customers should find the new location as convenient as the old one, some patrons disagreed.
"I feel really inconvenienced," said freshman Emily Carl, "I was trying to get a prescription filled and I had to go to Pickens, which was such a pain, and they didn't even have the medicine!"
Carl was not the only one with negative feelings about the move.
"I'm depressed that it's not here anymore because now I have to get my car and drive," said Wendy Goldstein, a contractor at IBM and the president of the Trinity Heights Neighborhood Association, who lives on Berkeley Street.
Alderman said the Eckerd Corporation will sublease the old site but did not specify how much time is left on the lease or what plans are in the works for the property.
The recent closing of the pharmacy at Kerr Drug was described by Diane Elezier, the store's director of marketing, as a necessary business decision, despite any adverse effects it may have on the community.
Citing increased costs of dispensing technologies, inventory and lengthier training for pharmacists, Elezier explained that the extremely low payback of managed care reimbursements makes it harder for pharmacies and drug stores to generate profit.
"You cut hours, cut other things to try to get the overhead down in order to pay the pharmacy, to pay the personnel... [but] sometimes [the reimbursements are] not enough to cover the cost of keeping the store open," she said. "You're going to see a lot more [closings] over the next few years."
But for John McDonald, who closed the pharmacy at his McDonald's Drug Store approximately two years ago, the decision was mainly a personal one.
"We'd been at it so long and after 50 years I figured I had filled enough prescriptions... I enjoyed it when I was doing it, but it got to be too much," he said. McDonald did, however, acknowledge that increasing costs and regulations would make it difficult to operate a pharmacy today.
He suggested that some pharmacy should move into the area because people still regularly enter his drugstore looking to get prescriptions filled.
"I feel that [Eckerd] has made a business mistake because they're going to lose a lot of East Campus business," said freshman Portia Cornell.
Sarah McGill contributed to this story.
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