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| Westside Family Pharmacy meets the Northside |
A local indie pharmacy serving the needs of the inner city and immigrant community are opening a second location. Westside Family Pharmacy is one of the last local drug stores left in Syracuse at a time when even the chains are struggling. In a David and Goliath twist, Rite Aid is closing stores nationwide, with the Shop City one already shuttered and the north side store on Lodi Street just having closed their pharmacy and clearing out everything else like with all remaining locations, yet is one of the only ones in CNY that didn't sell their prescriptions to Walgreens since they don't have a store on that side of town at this time (and didn't even acquire that Rite Aid in 2019), yet Kinney have had a smaller one for a decade after outgrowing a small one inside St Josephs Hospital (pictured in that article). As for this new store, it's about coming full circle. Westside will open their new Northside location in what was Fays Drugs until it was sold to Eckerd in 1997, which built an original store across Butternut Street, which became Dollar General some time after Rite Aid bought Eckerd because of overlap. The former Fays was sold to Dollar Tree, which closed a year or two ago, since they were still sister to Family Dollar a block away (in what was the old Rite Aid to boot before they opened their own standalone around the corner). Westsides flagship is located where Rite Aid and later Walgreens as well as another indie turned onetime CVS went out of business, which led to the founding of Westside in a diverse yet low-income neighborhood, which was and still is also reeling from the loss of Nojaim Bros. and later Brady Market. By this fall, Westside Northside should be open, making it the first mom and pop pharmacy there since Kress Drugs closed in the early '90s (which dated back to late Victorian times), even though it sort of moved to Upstates Almond St office near the soon-to-be-levelled-I-81 before being absorbed by Kinney. Westside will be like many small businesses and offer services that the big ones don't. With no one else covering this, it was up to me to offer this exclusive before the others catch up.
