The Rite Aid in Snohomish at Second Street and Pine Avenue.
Photo by Michael Whitney.
Hobbled pharmacy Rite Aid filed for bankruptcy a second time May 5. This time, everything’s up for grabs.
America’s No. 4 drugstore is selling off the unexpired leases of nearly all of its 1,240 stores and selling its headquarters as part of voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
“Rite Aid is working to facilitate a smooth transfer of customer prescriptions to other pharmacies,” the company said.
For Monroe, losing the 16,800-square-foot Rite Aid would close the city’s largest pharmacy. Independent pharmacy Pharm A Save Monroe transferred its prescription files to Rite Aid when it closed in December 2023.
Rite Aid and Bartell Drugs stores will cease to honor store gift cards or accept any return or exchanges on June 5.
It has 95 stores in Washington state. It bought the independent Bartell Drugs chain in 2020.
Chapter 11 is a restructuring to avoid Chapter 7 insolvency, but functionally it is Rite Aid’s death knell. The company had its first bankruptcy in fall 2023 and cut nearly half its near-2,100 store count.
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UPDATE, May 14: The store in Granite Falls will close on a date sometime after June 6, according to a May 9 filing in U.S. Bankruptcy court of new, formally identified store closures. It is among eight Washington stores set to formally close. The building lease was up for sale. The closure would appear to leave the Granite Falls Pharm A Save as one of the town's few remaining drugstores.
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Government-led opioid prescription lawsuits hit all major pharmacy chains. Rite Aid, though, lagged behind Walgreens and CVS in size and its ability to pay, and the company carried a large amount of debt.
Rite Aid’s Snohomish building at Pine Avenue and Second Street was built in 1958. It housed the Safeway before that moved to Second and Maple in 1974. It also was a Sprouse-Reitz variety store and later a PayLess Drugs, a West Coast chain which Rite Aid acquired in 1996.
