After more than a year of planning and construction, Walgreens opened its 24-hour flagship store in Downtown Crossing Wednesday.
More than 20,000 square feet of area, the store takes the place of Borders on the corner of Washington Street and School Street. It is the ninth flagship Walgreens has opened and offers more services than its traditional drugstore layout, including a sushi bar, coffee shop, frozen yogurt station and manicure section.
“Not that there’s anything wrong with the Walgreens we’re used to, but this is really significantly different,” said Rosemarie Sansone, president of the Downtown Boston Business Improvement District. “It’s just an unusual kind of model … it’s different than anything we’ve ever seen before.”
The drugstore chain announced it would take over the spot more than a year ago. Once plans were initiated — in association with the Boston Redevelopment Authority and BID — it held several forums around Boston to see which services residents preferred.
Damien Smith, district manager for Walgreens, said those forums changed how the store was to be run.
“What’s interesting is, when we first looked into the concept of this store, the plan was not to be 24 hours, but from community forums in different parts of the area, the community told us they wanted a 24-hour retailer,” he said.
In addition, the flagship has a kiosk linked to Boston Moves for Health, an initiative created by the city of Boston’s Public Health Commission that encourages fitness and gives points for every mile a person walks. Points become store credit when certain benchmarks are met.
Beth Stiller, Walgreens division vice president, said the Boston Moves kiosk is similar to a Walgreens program called Walk with Walgreens that offers rewards for purchasing products as well as for being physically fit, and the collaboration was the idea of Boston Mayor Thomas Menino.
“When he heard about the Boston Moves program, the mayor said, ‘We have to bring these [programs] together somehow,’ so we put them together,” she said. “We really want to support each other because we want to achieve the exact same thing.”
Residents disagreed though as to the how useful the store would be.
Colleen Murphy, 29, a Boston resident, said she would frequently be using the store because of its later hours.
“I just like how it’s different,” she said. “It’s very unique and it’s got a lot of nice perks … 24 hours is a great convenience factor, even if it’s just for small things.”
Steve French, 61, a Boston resident said while the store was needed, he worried about safety after dark in the Walgreens.
“They’re going to give all the little guys [other stores in the area] a run for their money,” he said. “They got it all … [but] I’d be more worried about people robbing or security. I’d come here around 11, but that’s the latest.”
Smith, who has worked in Boston, said he knew of potential safety issues and that the store was prepared.
“We have two guards on duty 24 hours a day,” he said. “They monitor activity inside the store and keep an eye on what’s happening just outside as well. We also have more than 170 cameras inside the store …We, as a company, have a good amount of experience nationwide with dealing with these types of environments, and I think we’ll be able to handle it here as well.”
Stiller also said she was confident in the store’s safety. Her main focus, she said, was how the different services in the stores would do over time.
“We think it is going to be one of our busiest locations in the area … [but] you won’t see [stores like] this in every community,” she said. “This is our playground for innovation. We try things that are new or pushing the envelope for our market channel, but what we hope to do is see how far our customers will let us go.”
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