Two CVS sites in Boston to be converted to housing

CVS store in Petworth DC.

One of the problems in a mixed use commercial district is chain stores like pharmacies don't want to operate in mixed use multi-story buildings.  

At later stages of the development of these corporations, real estate property management shifted away from local decision making in favor of decisions made at the corporate level.

In turn, the companies often sold off their property or developed new sites with long term leases with real estate investment trusts, who wanted single use not multiuse "plays."

-- "Problematic outcomes as real estate investment trusts buy more "high street" retail real estate" (2015)
-- "Further evidence of DC being an international/national real estate market," (2018)

That means that it's very hard for a local commercial district to move a company like CVS to store site development that is mixed use.

That's a big issue in DC.  While CVS has stores in mixed use developments, they also have single site developments which they seem to refuse to be open to redevelopment.  Sites include Georgia Avenue in Petworth, Georgia Avenue in Shaw, Georgia Avenue in Brightwood Park, and on Cedar Street in Takoma.

In Baltimore, rather than build a true mixed use multistory building, CVS constructed a store with a fake second story.

IN DC's Columbia Heights there is a CVS with a true second floor rented to a charter school but I don't know the mechanics of how that happened.

But the Boston Globe ("Long a drug store, this key spot on Beacon Hill could soon be apartments") and the Boston Business Journal ("Housing work begins at former Allston CVS") have articles about projects there involving the conversion of CVS sites to multiunit housing, using the empty air space presented by the store before.

I don't know why they didn't in turn contract to move into the space as ground floor retail.  Although it could because companies like CVS and Walgreens are closing stores after a mad spree of expansion, and this is a cheap way to close a store but fortunately and inadvertently adding value to the commercial district.

I think there is something else too.  CVS was founded in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and opened stores in Boston long before they had a national real estate development and management strategy.  My sense is that these sites in Boston were owned by local property owners that CVS engaged with early on in their development as a corporation, and those property owners were probably willing to make a deal--and let a lease run out--unlike REITs.

Visually, the new developments will be a big improvement.

And for commercial district revitalization managers, it's worth finding out how these transactions happened, in hopes that they can duplicate such changes in their own community.

CVS at 155 Charles Street in the Beacon Hill neighborhood.

It will be replaced by a 12 unit apartment building

with ground floor retail.

CVS at 1270 Commonwealth, Allston neighborhood

It will be replaced by a 206 unit apartment building with ground floor retail.