Hello, CVS? Anyone Home?
The decision to greatly expand the CVS at the expense of the surrounding businesses shows incredible insensitivity to community needs, aesthetics and common sense.
White Hen Pantry, a privately owned franchise, has been serving the town well and importantly at the location for years. CVS, too, is very useful to City residents at that location. As it now is, not as a much larger market. Who wants a CVS like the one in Salisbury Square on the Bartlett Mall in Newburyport? That would look horrible, cheap and commercial - it's already a shame to have a strip mall in that location, let's at least keep it to scale.
Comments by residents about CVS being "greedy" are absolutely valid. The national corporation of CVS has clearly lost touch with the community it serves. If CVS proceeds down this path, it can expect a community boycott.
Ann Lagasse, New England Development's leasing manager, told me about CVS "if they didn't get the space they needed, they would be gone from the property." Where would they go? Is Newburyport so unimportant to them?
I am told White Hen is working with a broker to find a new location, and is close to a deal. But if CVS is being run by anyone with brains, they'll take the residents of Newburyport seriously and reconsider their decision.
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