November 18, 2003
Pharmacy Campaigns to Protect Its Business
By MELISSA SCOTT SINCLAIR, The Virginian-Pilot

CHESAPEAKE — Gary Lawrence stood outside his Deep Creek pharmacy Friday afternoon, sliding letters into the big sign one by one: T U E.

“Tues 630 City Hall,” it said, right under “We need your help” and over “Flu shots Nov 18 10 AM-PM.”

With this plastic alphabet, a barrage of letters and “an army that would march on City Hall in a minute,” Lawrence, 65, is campaigning to protect the business it took him 38 years to build.

A local developer intends to build a Walgreens drugstore on the lot next to Lawrence Pharmacy, which stands at the intersection of George Washington Highway and Woodland Terrace Drive.

Ellis-Gibson Development Group would tear down the tiny Dixie Land restaurant, whose operators own the site, as well as a small brick house, a mobile home and two sheds, and build a 14,000-square-foot Walgreens with a single drive-through lane.

Neither the developer nor Walgreens plans to drive Lawrence out of business, said Donna Macmillan, president of Commercial Real Estate Services, which is working on the project with Ellis-Gibson.

“The site was chosen because they wanted to be at that intersection,” Macmillan said of Walgreens and because negotiations didn’t work out for an available site on the other side of George Washington Highway.

Lawrence maintains he’s not worried about folding to the competition.
He boasts a loyal base of customers, he said, and offers services Walgreens doesn’t have: an independent florist, personalized help from pharmacists and the distinctive purple-and-white soda fountain and grill, The Creek.
The only items he doesn’t sell are beer and cigarettes, which Lawrence contends have no place in a pharmacy.

And his store is by no means puny. It’s a 12,000-square-foot, beige-block building built eight years ago, with a teal structure framing the entrance and drive-through service.

“I built it like the big boys,” Lawrence said.

But the presence of the Walgreens would destroy his investment, said Patty Lawrence, his wife. “He believes in the independent pharmacist,” she said and always hoped to sell to a like-minded person upon his retirement. But who would buy an independent pharmacy – one of two left in Chesapeake – next to a national-chain drugstore? she asks.

The developer still needs one thing from the city in order to go ahead with construction – a conditional use permit for amplification, required before the store can use loudspeakers in its drive-through.

Lawrence and his Deep Creek neighbors gathered to protest the issuing of that permit at the Oct. 8 meeting of the Planning Commission, where they spoke of Lawrence’s long presence in the neighborhood and the injustice of allowing a large chain store next door.

“Competition and destroying are two different things,” said longtime Camelot community leader C.C. Hawkins.

Commissioner Dr. Stanley B. Smith reminded those who opposed the Walgreens that the commission only had the authority to recommend approval or denial of the permit for the drive-through. Nor can the commission’s decision legally take into account competition, Smith said.

However, the commission voted 6-3 to deny the application, citing concerns about traffic and the safety of a drive-through at that location.

The developers have requested two entrances from George Washington Highway, an extra turn lane for the Walgreens and a change in the traffic signal that would allow cars to go straight from Canal Drive into a new driveway.

George Washington Highway narrows to three lanes – one in each direction and a center turn lane – south of Canal Drive. With 26,900 cars moving daily on George Washington Highway between Canal Drive and the Portsmouth city line, “It’s going to be very dangerous,” Lawrence said.

The matter is scheduled to come before City Council tonight, although the developers have asked for a continuance of 30 days.

“We’re a little confused as to why we’re being turned down,” Macmillan said. There have been 27 applications for conditional use permits for drive-throughs in Chesapeake in the past six years, Macmillan said, and only one denial. She said she feels “absolutely” that this project is getting different treatment.

The drugstore chain is waiting until the permit is approved before agreeing to come to the site, she said.

Walgreens is the fastest-growing of the nation’s drugstores, said company spokeswoman Carol Hively, and leads the pack in annual sales. It operates 41 stores in Virginia, with 15 of those in Hampton Roads, including one in Chesapeake, near the intersection of Battlefield Boulevard and Cedar Road.

The company also intends to lease space at the northwest corner of Battlefield Boulevard and Volvo Parkway, Hively said, for a store that would open in early 2005.

Walgreens plans to build 450 stores this fiscal year, which begins Sept. 1 – more than a store every day, she said. As of Oct. 31, it counted 4,247 stores in the United States.
Hively confirmed that Walgreens often builds next to existing pharmacies.

“That’s pretty common now,” she said, but not because Walgreens is trying to put others out of business. “We’re looking for the same kinds of corners,” Hively said – in well-traveled areas, preferably near a hospital or doctor’s office.

“I don’t care if they come here,” Lawrence said. He just doesn’t see why the site next door, of all places, is the one they picked.

If the council chooses not to approve the amplification permit, Macmillan said, “then we have a decision to make, whether to go ahead and build the building without the amplication.” Or? “Not build.”

Reach Melissa Sinclair at 222-5208 or at melissa.sinclair@pilotonline. com