After 110 years, West 7th Pharmacy to Close

West 7th Pharmacy, which has been continuously operating at 1106 West 7th since 1915, announced on May 19 it would be closing its doors for good on June 30.

“It’s sorrowful, it’s joyful, it’s a lot of things,” said owner Jeff Johnson.

Johnson, who has owned the pharmacy since 1999 with his wife Lucy and business partner Linnea Forsell, didn’t make the decision lightly. He said he has been in discussions for the past few years about what comes next, but ultimately said he couldn’t find anyone to take over the business.

“We’ve been trying to sell the pharmacy, but all of my pharmacists don’t want to take over,” he said, adding, “no one is buying pharmacies right now.”

Johnson said that a number of factors, including the current market for small pharmacies, some health issues and his wife’s impending retirement from her 42-year career as a pharmacist at Children’s Hospitals and Clinics all informed his decision, but ultimately, as he told several customers as they came through the door to share their grief over the shop closing, “It’s just time.”

He has mostly been letting people know about the closure through word of mouth, suggesting they call their insurance companies to find a pharmacy that is right for them when they ask what to do next. 

Johnson said they plan to have a liquidation sale in the coming weeks to sell their remaining inventory and are working to have someone purchase their remaining pharmaceutical stock.

The Johnson’s have been a mainstay of the West 7th Community for the past 26 years since they bought the business

“I can remember the day I came home from where I was working and my wife greets me and says, ‘honey, we’re going to buy a pharmacy,’” Johnson said.

They bought the business and the property along with Forsell, a former employee of the previous owners who wanted to keep the business going when they were ready to retire.

“She worked for the two guys who owned it: Mort Holmgren, he’d been here for 25 years, and the other guy was Frank Windisch, who owned Lillis Drug, which was right next to Mancini’s.”

Forsell was involved in the day-to-day operations for the first 10-years of their partnership until her retirement.

The Johnson’s bought their first house in the West 7th community and lived three blocks from the Pharmacy while they raised their seven children, until they ran out of space and moved to a slightly bigger place about a mile away.

“All of our kids went to school down here. Our church was down here and my wife said, ‘you know, you buy this pharmacy, your kids will know where you are,  I’ll know where you are because you’ll be at work or you’ll be here,” he said.

Over the years, that led to their kids working with them and really getting to know the community they lived and worked in.

And that, to Johnson, has been the biggest blessing of owning the business for two-and-a-half decades.

“It worked out well. It’s been a good gig,” he said. “Being a part of the community has just been amazing.”