BY SAM SPOKONY | In an unexpected turn that left Lower East Side community leaders dismayed, the Pathmark pharmacy at 237-239 Cherry St. closed on Tuesday, two months earlier than the company had previously announced.
A spokesperson for A&P, which owns Pathmark, declined to answer why the decision was made to close the pharmacy prematurely and without any warning to customers — mostly low-income senior citizens — who have relied on its services for decades.
But Victor Papa, president of the Two Bridges Neighborhood Council, explained that, during a phone call last week, an attorney for A&P told him that the pharmacy was closing due to “practical and financial considerations.”
The pharmacy had been located in a separate building from the Pathmark supermarket at 227 Cherry St., which is still scheduled to close on Dec. 28.
While the lease for the 30-year-old supermarket’s building was sold by A&P last month to make way for a large-scale residential development, the building that formerly housed the pharmacy is owned by the Two Bridges Neighborhood Council. That fact had no bearing on the situation’s outcome.
Residents throughout the neighborhood, especially those within its heavily populated public housing projects, have rallied against the Pathmark’s impending closure since A&P announced on Sept. 28 that it had sold the lease. But the pharmacy’s closed doors appear to have drained any previous community optimism, which had raised after the area’s elected officials threw their support behind outraged and worried residents.
On Monday, the A&P spokesperson said in a statement that the company would attempt to assuage neighborhood concerns by making all of the shuttered pharmacy’s prescription records available to customers at a nearby Rite Aid pharmacy, at 408 Grand St., beginning Oct. 24.
Two Bridges has also engaged its own contingency plan to help unprepared residents deal with the sudden loss of their pharmacy. The neighborhood council enlisted the help of Mannings Pharmacy, located in Chinatown’s Confucius Plaza, which has, since Monday, begun delivering prescriptions to elderly tenants of 80 and 82 Rutgers Slip who are unable to walk to the Rite Aid or any other new locations.
“I feel that we’ve done the best we could,” Papa said during a phone call on Monday evening.
He added that, as the situation develops, he and Two Bridges hope to convince A&P executives to run a shuttle bus from their Lower East Side neighborhood to another Pathmark location, either in Harlem or Gowanus, in order to further aid residents who need access to fresh, affordable groceries or drug prescriptions.
Papa had a phone conversation with A&P C.E.O. Sam Martin on Monday, shortly before speaking with this newspaper. During that conversation, he brought up the shuttle idea, as well as the ongoing request for the company to help ensure that any new development built on the Cherry St. site will include a new supermarket-pharmacy combination that matches Pathmark’s affordability and quality.
While Papa said that Martin expressed admiration for the work Two Bridges has done in support of Pathmark and the neighborhood as a whole, he added that the C.E.O. did not give definite answers to any of his requests, saying that he would look into them with A&P staff members and respond at a later date.
It’s clear now that initial hopes of a grassroots success story in this case have been deflated. But even as the end of Pathmark’s Lower East Side presence looms large, the Two Bridges president explained that, in his opinion as a veteran community organizer, the time for angry protests is over.
“We have to keep up pressure for an affordable supermarket in the new building, but we also have to develop a better relationship with A&P,” Papa said. “There’s just no use in keeping up the rancor, when a constructive relationship might allow us to get back some of the valuable services we could otherwise lose forever.”
Before ending their phone conversation on Monday, Papa proposed to meet with Martin in person sometime before Thanksgiving in order to further discuss the future prospects for Two Bridges residents — and he hopes that at least that request will be fulfilled.
Meanwhile, the joint letter sent by five elected officials to Martin on Oct. 5 — in which they expressed grave concern for residents who will struggle without their neighborhood Pathmark — has not yet received a reply.
