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Friday, March 19, 2010

Ferguson Says 'No' to CVS

As recently reported by NoCoSTL.com, CVS officials have dropped plans for a CVS store at North Florissant and Hereford Avenues in the North County municipality of Ferguson.

CVS wished to demolish seven historic homes in Ferguson to shoehorn one of its generic suburban stores onto a lot conveniently located across the street from arch rival Walgreens.

We've seen this move by CVS before. The pharmacy giant built a store catty-corner to a Walgreens on Gravois in Boulevard Heights, taking several homes down with it. A proposed CVS on Lindell nearly demolished three buildings off of the landscape before being called off, more than likely due to issues with usage of the alley for the drive-through. The Walgreens on Lindell is less than a block from this site.

It's nice to see a citizens' group rise up and defeat one of these proposals to demolish sound and attractive buildings for duplicative services. Bravo, Ferguson!

Here's a Google Streetview shot of two of the homes slated for demolition:


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St. Louis: Let Ferguson be our guide. Historic character is more important than allowing chain pharmacies to steal away some market share from one another!

On a slightly different note: just because a CVS promises to build up to the street and screen parking, it doesn't mean the building is "urban" in format or that gestures toward urbanism justify squandering historic buildings for unneeded services. That Central West End CVS was dangerously close to being approved if it "urbanized" itself a bit more. To me, architectural diversity and pedestrian-friendliness spell urbanism. If CVS can't reuse a building, or find a vacant parcel in the city to build on and to build a new store appropriate to the urban environment, then CVS is simply not welcome.

3 comments:

Alex said...

That's so awesome. I'm really excited for Ferguson (yeah, I'm a dork). Residents are taking control of development in their neighborhoods and town and using commonsense instead of a pure market imperative to do so. The whole point here should really be: Why would a community allow the destruction of historic housing stock in order to have an additional pharmacy identical to the one a block away. The CVS would serve zero community need.

Chris said...

CVS is the devil. They are the crappiest drug store on the planet. I had to suffer through six years of their hegemony on the East Coast.

john w. said...

Is there no Duane Eddy in D.C.?

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