CVS Health, the largest retail pharmacy chain in America, announced early this month that it planned to purchase Aetna, one of the largest health insurance companies. It was a move analysts say was meant to keep the brick-and-mortar pharmacy juggernaut competitive as e-tailer Amazon moves in to disrupt the prescription drug industry.
Over the last few years, CVS has become all-but-synonymous with “drug store” for much of the U.S., wiping out independent pharmacists as its outlets have marched through cities coast-to-coast. CVS has been on a tear during the last decade, with stores in 49 states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, and Brazil. The number of CVS storesgrew more than 30 percent to more than 9,700 from 2012 to 2017. More than 1,600 are located inside Target stores, which in 2015 sold its pharmacies to CVS for $1.9 billion.
The state of Idaho, however, has only two lonely CVS outposts. Both are inside Targets, and neither is in Boise, the fast-growing high-desert capital city of 223,000. The company has been trying to remedy that situation: In October, a developer filed an application to build a single-floor 12,000-square-foot CVS retail pharmacy on Boise’s West State Street, an urban gateway that links multiple neighborhoods to the city’s downtown.
To make space for the store and its parking lot—which would have occupied nearly a city block—the developer planned to demolish three homes and a building with 23 low-income residences, at a time when the city’s downtown is quickly gentrifying and concerns about low-income residents being pushed out are intensifying.