meadowbrook pharmacy – C-VILLE Weekly

In business: Drugs, booze and a moving van

By Lisa Provence and Samantha Baars

Sure it’s blistering hot, but for three new businesses, July was the perfect time to hang a shingle. One local pharmacist fills a void, an app from a UVA alum serves an untapped market, and a moving company franchise offers help with the heavy stuff.

Meadowbrook begats Top Notch Pharmacy

For those mourning the recently closed Meadowbrook Pharmacy, its former pharmacist has opened her own independent drugstore, and it looks a lot like the old one, albeit with different ownership.

Leah Argie wanted to own her own pharmacy one day, and when she learned this spring that she would be out of a job, that timeline got pushed up a bit.

Last week Top Notch Pharmacy had a soft opening of its Preston Avenue store, which is eerily reminiscent of Meadowbrook, although maybe there are only so many independent drugstore designs.

Argie was considering candles when a reporter walked in, the “fun part” of the job, she says. Like her former place of employment, she wants to sell unusual gifts, like the toddler seersucker bow tie-and-suspenders combo, that you don’t find anywhere else.

Despite another CVS coming in on the Meadowbrook site at the corner of Barracks Road and Emmet Street, Argie thinks there’s room for an independent pharmacy like Top Notch to “fill the specialty niche no one else is doing in Charlottesville,” she says.

That includes making compound medications, such as hormone replacement creams, gluten-free meds or carrying veterinary drugs.

And if you have multiple daily drugs, Top Notch will create blister packs to put all the morning drugs together so it’s easier to take what you need at the right time.

“That’s a service that’s hard to find,” says Argie.

Top Notch will deliver drugs, and there’s one more similarity to Meadowbrook: Argie hired several of the folks who worked there. “People will see some familiar faces,” she says.

An app you’ll want to drink to

A look at the app’s local map, courtesy of Happy Hour Hunter.

A month ago, UVA alumni and CEO of Edge Tech Labs Shaun Masavage broke into a previously untapped market when he launched Happy Hour Hunter, an app designed to help you belly up to the bar without emptying your pockets.

As if you needed to be encouraged to get your drink on, Happy Hour Hunter maps out up-to-date drink specials in the user’s city. It’s one of two uses of an app called DrinkMate, which also functions as a breathalyzer if you buy an additional mouthpiece.

Though his app is the first to offer such a public drinking service, Masavage says other efforts to track happy hours, such as “an underground spreadsheet” that once circulated through Washington, D.C., have caught his eye.

“A lot of people have tried to do this before and they’ve continually failed because they don’t have a method of keeping things up to date,” he says. “The best aspect is that you can help keep deals up to date with your own edits and earn points and badges along the way. This is why we call it a ‘Wikipedia for happy hours.’”

About 3,500 monthly active users have already downloaded the app in Charlottesville and other cities, including D.C., Baltimore, New York City and Miami, but Masavage says tracking every special in every bar in every city in America will take some time. His team has also been surprised to see happy hour aficionados entering drinking data in Ireland and Germany.

“We didn’t even realize how big happy hours are overseas,” he says.

Another franchise moves to town

A college town sees a lot of relocating, enough that a former Charlottesvillian and his partners decided to open a Two Men and a Truck franchise here.

The company started booking moves last week, “the second we turned [on] the website,” says Rebecca Feldman, one of the franchise owners. She and her husband own franchises in Richmond and Chesterfield, and turning west to Charlottesville seemed like a logical step.

Partner Nathan Bocock, who also works out of Wilmington, North Carolina, attended Stone Robinson Elementary, and got his start in the moving biz working with Bryan Feldman in college. “We love the Charlottesville area and I wanted to visit more often,” he says.

Two Men currently employs between 10 and 12 people and has two trucks. The company anticipates a fleet of about 12 trucks and 50 employees in the next few years, says Rebecca Feldman.

Besides packing, loading and unloading your possessions, specialty services include moving grand pianos and hauling out furniture when a house is getting new floors, says Feldman.

And here’s a tip for new-to-the-area Two Men and a Truck: Watch out for the 14th Street bridge, which loves to eat moving vans.

For many of its longtime customers, the letter arrived April 24 announcing the demise of Meadowbrook Pharmacy after more than 60 years at the corner of Barracks Road and Emmet Street. And the sadness at the loss of one of Charlottesville’s two independent pharmacies was not assuaged with news that a CVS would be opening on the same corner.

“They’re being forced out,” says customer Ruth Rooks. “A lot of people are extremely upset. My whole family is grieving. Nobody wants to go to CVS.”

Says Rooks, “I think a lot of people in town would greatly prefer to deal with a family-owned business.”

Owner Willie Lamar is too busy to talk to reporters during business hours, especially with the stream of clients coming into the store to express their dismay about the store’s closing. When he finally gets a break at the end of the day, he says, “I knew the lease was not going to be renewed.”

Lamar, 61, comes from a pharmacy family—his parents own one in Madison, and he’s a partner in independent stores in Stanardsville and Orange. He bought Meadowbrook Pharmacy July 1, 1983.

“I haven’t found a space where the logistics would work,” he says, when asked about relocating. “It takes a year or two to get a business going, and by then I would be bumping up against retirement.”

The store was known for free delivery of prescriptions, and its uncommon offerings of gifts like the wear-it-three-ways beach cover-up, New Yorker greeting cards and children’s books. “It was not just a pharmacy,” says Rooks. “It was a lovely place and fun to go in.”

Clara Belle Wheeler owns the Meadowbrook Shopping Center, which was built by her father, and she goes to the pharmacy when she needs a hostess gift or Christmas present. “My father did all his Christmas shopping on Christmas Eve at Meadowbrook Pharmacy,” she recalls.

“There used to be a soda fountain,” she says. “I’d go in and get a chocolate fudge sundae.”

But those soda fountain days are long gone, and Wheeler has been trying to redevelop that primo corner, which housed local institutions the Carriage Food House and the Tavern, for years.

“Ever since CVS and I have been in negotiations since maybe 2000, it’s been up and down,” she says. But during that time, “I have been in contact, discussion and consultation with Willie Lamar. He has been a wonderful tenant. It was never a matter of pushing someone away.”

She says Lamar, who lives in Madison, told her the last time he signed a five-year lease, “I’m tired of running up and down the road. I’ve got these other businesses.”

And she insists, “In no way was there any bullying in these negotiations. Every time I met with CVS, I always said at the beginning and the end, ‘CVS must negotiate a suitable buyout with Meadowbrook Pharmacy that’s acceptable to Mr. Lamar or we won’t have a deal. Do I make myself clear?’”

“I’ve got no problem with Clara Belle,” says Lamar.

But while Wheeler declines to confirm whether CVS demanded no competing pharmacies on the site, Lamar does. “For CVS to enter into a lease, the requirement was that my lease not be renewed,” he says.

The last day to get a prescription filled is May 8, and then Lamar will transfer all of his current files, prescription records and inventory to the CVS at Barracks Road Shopping Center. “In the pharmacy business,” he explains, “you can’t just close. Then people can’t get their records.”

Customer Christine Davis does not want her family’s records to go to CVS. “I don’t necessarily want a large corporation having access to my records,” she says. “I don’t feel CVS should be able to buy my medical records without my consent.”

The new, nearly 13,000-square-foot CVS, one of 9,700 stores nationally, is expected to open in March 2019, according to a CVS spokesperson.

The Planning Commission has granted the project entrance corridor approval. Next up will be site plan approval. And before any ground gets broken, the market, Tavern and ALC Copies buildings will be demolished.

DCIM100MEDIADJI_0156.JPG Meadowbrook Shopping Center — ALC Copies, Anderson’s Carriage Food House and the Tavern are destined for demolition, but the strip center with the soon-to-close Meadowbrook Pharmacy and El Puerto will remain. Photo Skyclad

The strip mall center that houses the pharmacy, Cottonwood fabrics store and El Puerto restaurant is not going anywhere, stresses Wheeler.

As for the “grassy knoll”—the one-acre parcel where Wheeler tried to build a mixed-use building with underground parking that was nixed by the city—“I can’t tell you what’s going to happen,” she says. “They authorize nine-story buildings on Main Street, but not four-and-a-half stories on this site. They say they want mixed use, so I don’t understand.”

The Meadowbrook Pharmacy closure leaves Timberlake’s Drug Store the last independent standing in Charlottesville. “I was a little surprised,” says its pharmacist, David Plantz. “I knew CVS was coming in but I thought they’d relocate.”

He says rumors that Timberlake’s is for sale are just that, and he expects his business to grow with the Meadowbrook customers he’s heard from who are moving their prescription filling.

Back at Meadowbrook a couple of days after the closing was announced, customers continue to mourn the loss of their pharmacy. A woman tells Sandy Davis, one of Lamar’s nine employees, how much they’ll be missed, and Davis wipes tears from her eyes.