On the inside, Pure Supermarket in Bellaire-Puritas looks exactly like what it is: a brand new supermarket with bins of fresh produce, shelves of hard-to-find staples for ethnic dishes and a counter for hot Middle Eastern to-go meals.
On the outside, however, the grocery store looks familiar. The building has the distinct triangular entryway of a Walgreens because that’s what it used to be.
The Walgreens closed in 2024 amid what some have nicknamed “pharmageddon,” a sweeping contraction in the retail pharmacy industry over the last several years that has resulted in thousands of closures across the country.
Just a few months after Walgreens left the building vacant, Saleem Hussain’s family, which also owns a couple of gas stations on Cleveland’s East Side, bought the building for $1.6 million.
After more than a year of rehab and setbacks — about $700,000 in damage from vandalism, then a burst water line — Pure Supermarket officially opened for business in February.
“I had people tell me just forget about it. You’re just putting yourself in a place where this is gonna make you go bankrupt, you know?” Hussain said. “I’m like, no. I’m already in it. Whatever happens, happens.”
Some former drugstores remain vacant in Cleveland
The former Walgreens that is now Pure Supermarket is one of at least 19 pharmacy chain stores in Cleveland that have shut since 2020, based on an analysis of property records, real estate listings and local reporting.
Cuyahoga County overall lost 60 pharmacies, accounting for nearly 11% of closures across Ohio in that timeframe. In recent years, the county had its most pharmacies, 237, in 2015. That number was down to 173 in 2025.
At least eight of the recently closed stores in Cleveland remain vacant with some up for lease and others in early stages of redevelopment. A real estate firm that owns a vacant Walgreens on Union Avenue, for example, is planning to reopen the building as a beauty supply store, according to a recent Board of Zoning Appeals meeting.
On the other side of town, a vacant CVS in Cudell has been wrapped up in clashes with residents, city officials and the property owner, Shaker Madison LLC, proposing different ways to redevelop the building. Most recently, the city said it could use eminent domain to try and take the property, with plans to build a new fire station, if Shaker Madison doesn’t accept an offer sent in March.
The city’s deadline for a response to the offer passed with no word from the developer, said spokesperson Tyler Sinclair.
Primary care clinics, daycares and a library
When these closures first started ramping up in Cleveland, residents worried that picking up prescriptions would get a lot more complicated with fewer options and greater distances between them.
The city does have fewer pharmacies now, but the most common reuse of these buildings has remained in health care. Four of them have reopened as primary care clinics in Jefferson, Mount Pleasant and North Broadway. Three of them are operated by national chains specializing in care for older adults: ArchWell Health and Oak Street Health. These clinics don’t have in-house pharmacies, opting for home delivery prescriptions.
The outlier is a former CVS in Jefferson. Neighborhood Family Practice moved in last year and opened a drive-through pharmacy at the location in March.
Elsewhere in Cleveland, recently closed drugstores have become dollar stores, daycares, a Goodwill and the temporary home of the Euclid Public Library during renovations on its main location.
Have you spotted a vacant or redeveloped pharmacy that I missed?
Send me an email: michael@signalcleveland.org
Investors thought drugstores ‘would stay forever’
That lines up with national trends, according to Jason Miller, the principal of a Michigan-based real estate firm called Grand Sacwa. Miller runs a blog full of in-depth research into the reuse of retail buildings, including former pharmacies.
Health clinics and dollar store chains often bite on vacant drugstores, he said, because they see an opportunity to inherit customers that already sought healthcare and everyday items from those locations.
“In fact, sometimes, some of these retailers are actually tailoring their product offering to match what some of the previous retailers would sell,” Miller said.
Part of it has to do with location, too, he said. For decades, chains like Rite Aid, CVS and Walgreens rapidly amplified their presence across the country by leasing lots on the corners of major streets, offering above-market rent on long-term contracts to secure prime locations.
“It was perceived that Rite Aid or CVS or whomever would stay forever,” Miller said. “It’s very difficult to replace the rent that a drugstore paid. They were, generally speaking, among the highest rent-payers in the industry.”
In hindsight, that strategy backfired for those companies and, to a lesser extent, for real estate investors who figured buying property leased by a drugstore was a safe bet.
Mounting overhead was a key part of the sudden mass closures for retail drugstore companies. And now, their prime locations are a double-edged sword as property owners look for new tenants, Miller said. On one hand, busy corners are perfect for a variety of other retailers. But the kinds of leases pharmacy chains offered are a thing of the past, and the buildings often need work to meet the needs of new tenants.
‘Accommodate the neighborhood’
Hussain, the owner of Pure Supermarket, got a decent deal on the former Walgreens he bought. He paid about $400,000 less than the previous property owner did in 2019. But after all the renovations and expenses to make the building work as a grocery store, the venture has cost him over $5 million, he said.
“When these, you know, big corporations move out, they leave vacant buildings,” he said. “They just walk out, and whoever owns the property is now stuck with it.”
So far, the store has attracted consistent customers, he said, but many of them aren’t spending a lot of money on each trip. He’s in the process of getting authorization to accept EBT cards to make the store more accessible for the roughly 25% of Bellaire-Puritas residents who receive food assistance.
Hussain is also working with a grocery store software company to build a website offering online shopping and home delivery within the next few months, he said.
Brain Kazy, the Cleveland City Council Member who represents Bellaire-Puritas, has been coordinating with Hussain, the city and neighborhood residents to help the store get up and running. It’s the third independently owned grocery store in the neighborhood, he said.
“It’s just putting in the hard work and dedication to go out and find the best use for these vacant buildings,” he said. “You got to accommodate the neighborhood — to make sure, one, you take care of the neighborhood, but two, that the businesses that you put in are successful.”
