GUILDERLAND — Rite Aid at 2025 Western Ave., one of four pharmacies located near the corner of routes 155 and 20 in Guilderland, is closing.

Walgreens has bought 1,932 Rite Aid stores across the country, including the one in Guilderland with a Walgreens at the same intersection.

The company announced last October that it would close some store locations “to help ensure we have the right stores in the right locations to create a more focused network of stores that can deliver the greatest value for our customers,” Jim Cohn, senior director of corporate media relations for Walgreens, told The Enterprise this week.

The pharmacy within the Guilderland Rite Aid closed on Sept. 17. Prescriptions are being transferred to the Walgreens across Route 155, at 2061 Western Ave.

The Guilderland Rite Aid is currently closed for inventory and will reopen on Sept. 20 for a liquidation sale, according to a sign on the front door.

After the pharmacy closes, stores typically remain open for about two weeks, said Cohn, “to allow for the final sale of all products,” said Cohn.

Besides Walgreens, the two other pharmacies at this intersection are CVS across Route 20, on the southeast corner, and the Price Chopper/Market 32 pharmacy inside the grocery store in Hamilton Square Mall, on the southwest corner.

The approximately 11,000-square-foot Rite-Aid building on 1.9 acres is owned by Western Corners Realty LLC, 596 New Loudon Rd., Latham, according to tax assessment rolls. The address for this limited liability company is the same as the address of Karner Corners Realty, LLC, which owns the Karner Plaza around the corner at 5 New Karner Rd.

History

There were four discrete drugstores on the corner at one point, said Karen Van Wagenen, Guilderland’s assessor. Fay’s was next-door to Price Chopper and closed around the time that the Rite Aid and Walgreens stores were being built, she said.

Rite-Aid moved in soon after the building at 2052 Western Ave. was built in 1997, and has been there since, Van Wagenen said.

In June, the town settled several longstanding tax certiorari court proceedings, including one with Walgreens that had been in court since 2017. Van Wagenen said this was the third certiorari Walgreens had filed with the town over the past decade.

When first built, in 2006, the Walgreens building was valued at $3,220,500, Van Wagenen said. The first certiorari lowered it to $2,680,000, and the next, in 2014, to $2,500,000. The third and final one, she said, saw it lowered to $2,134,100, a figure that she said “will bring the building in line with the other two drugstores at the same intersection.”

There is usually a three-year freeze after an assessment comes out, Van Wagenen said, so certioraris cannot be filed any more often than every four years.

The full-market value of Walgreens — after multiplying by the equalization rate of .779 — is $3,209,243. It’s on a corner lot, which is considered a prime location, and it’s a relatively new building, she said. She said it helps that there is a left-turn lane there, to turn in on Route 20, coming from the west.

The full-market value of Rite Aid is $1,784,339.

The assessed value of the CVS at that same intersection is $1,050,600, according to county tax rolls, and the full-market value is $1,348,652. The building dates from the 1960s, said Van Wagenen, and was an A&P grocery store a long time ago.

“Walgreens has been coming down toward the value of the other two. Pretty soon they’ll be about even,” Van Wagenen said.