PayLess Drugs (Northwest)

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Super S
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PayLess Drugs (Northwest)

Post by Super S »

Dean wrote:
Dean wrote:Enjoyed seeing the following sign:

Coming Soon! Another NEW LONGS!

On Highway 111 @ Deep Canyon, in Palm Desert CA.

There is a CVS in the Ralphs center just a bit east...which I assume will close, and assume the NEW location...if the construction continues. Seems to just be the beginning...dirt turning, etc.
Building is going up fast. It will interesting to see what it opens as. Sign still says LONGS.

That reminds me of another chain that was bought out...

I remember in 1997, there was a sign at the corner of 136th & Mill Plain in Vancouver that read "Future Home of PayLess Drug" right when they were bought out by Rite-Aid. I think that sign stayed in place right up until the Rite-Aid signs went on the building. I think that the plans were altered for Rite-Aid though, as the store did not resemble a PayLess at all when it opened.
marshd1000
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Re: Long's Drugs being bought by CVS and will disappear by 2009

Post by marshd1000 »

I remember seeing the last new Payless in Seattle in the Fremont district. It opened after the Rite Aid merger. It had the Payless logo but a Rite Aid interior. It didn't last long. It eventually became a store called, "Fremont Fresh Market". I don't know if it is still there.
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Brian Lutz
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Re: PayLess Drugs (Northwest)

Post by Brian Lutz »

The vast majority of the current Rite Aid (former Payless) stores around here happen to be carryovers from the old Pay 'n Save. The Pay 'n Save brand existed from 1941-1988, and the company also owned a number of other brands including Lamonts, Pay 'n Pak, Ernst Hardware, Malmo Nursery, Sportswest and Shucks Auto Supply.

Pay 'n Save merged with Thrifty in 1988, which tnen merged with Payless Drugs in 1994, which then was purchased by Rite Aid in 1998. Although the decor eventually got updated to current Rite Aid standards in many stores, a number of stores still have some leftovers from their earlier Payless and even Pay 'n Save incarnations.

Lamonts was a department store chain which frequently anchored small malls in the area, and folded in 1999. Gottschalks bought the chain out of bankruptcy and ran many of the former Lamonts stores for a couple of years, but eventually closed down all but a handful of them. Ernst Hardware and Garden folded in 1996, and Sportswest merged with Big 5 Sporting Goods (which continues to operate most of the stores) in the 1980s. Schucks Auto remains in operation to this day under CSK Auto. Pay 'n Save had a tendency to put a number of their stores into a single mall (for example, the Totem Lake Mall in Kirkland and Factoria Square Mall in Bellevue both originally had Lamonts, Pay 'n Save, Ernst and Sportswest, and Crossroads in Bellevue had Lamonts and Ernst.)
The Sledgehammer - Version 2.0 - Seattle Area Malls, Retail History, and other random things.
tkaye
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Re: PayLess Drugs (Northwest)

Post by tkaye »

Brian Lutz wrote:The vast majority of the current Rite Aid (former Payless) stores around here happen to be carryovers from the old Pay 'n Save. The Pay 'n Save brand existed from 1941-1988, and the company also owned a number of other brands including Lamonts, Pay 'n Pak, Ernst Hardware, Malmo Nursery, Sportswest and Shucks Auto Supply.

Pay 'n Save merged with Thrifty in 1988, which tnen merged with Payless Drugs in 1994, which then was purchased by Rite Aid in 1998.
It's a little more complex than that, actually. Thrifty Corp., an operating unit of Pacific Enterprises, a Los Angeles-based gas and oil company, purchased Pay 'n' Save from Eddie and Julius Trump (no relation to Donald -- these guys were South African) in 1988. (The Trump Group had acquired P'n'S in a 1984 hostile takeover.) Thrifty continued to operate the stores under the Pay 'n' Save name -- in fact, Thrifty rebranded their existing stores in Pay 'n' Save's trade area.

Pacific Enterprises got out of the retail business in 1992, selling P'n'S to Kmart Corp., which was the owner of PayLess Drug Stores Northwest. Kmart quickly changed all the P'n'S stores to the PayLess banner. The remainder of Thrifty Corp., including Thrifty Drug Stores, was sold to Leonard Green and Partners, an investment group based in Los Angeles. Then, in 1994, Green acquired PayLess from Kmart, which was then in process of shedding its subsidiaries. The resulting company, Thrifty PayLess Holdings, was sold to Rite Aid Corp. in 1996. Rite Aid began the process of rebranding Thrifty PayLess stores in mid-1997, first as "Thrifty PayLess, now a Rite Aid pharmacy" and the changeover was complete by the Christmas shopping season.
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