CVS Pharmacy to replace Capitol Boulevard strip center

A CVS Pharmacy developer is proposing to demolish the Fisher Retail Building strip center across from Boise State University with Tree City Juice and Smoothie Café, Subway, Nutrishop and Textbook Exchange.

Tenants aren’t convinced yet but T.M. Crowley & Associates, an Indianapolis-based developer, said the strip center will go if the city approval process proceeds as desired.

“It will be demolished,” confirmed Cody Herbster, vice president of real estate at T.M. Crowley, which also intends to build a CVS Pharmacy at Fairview Avenue and Cole Road.

T.M. Crowley wants to build a one-story, 13,111-square-foot CVS Pharmacy at 1265 S. Capitol Blvd. at Ann Morrison Park Drive/University Boulevard.

The plan also calls for demolishing the vacant former Pizza Hut at the rear of the 1.78-acre property, according to a conditional-use permit application for a drive-thru filed at Boise Planning and Development Services.

The city approval process is at a very preliminary stage.

“It’s pretty fluid at this point,” Herbster said. “There are tenants to take care of. We don’t have a start date.”

Four student housing complexes with a combined 541 units and 1,050 beds opened in 2015 within a couple blocks of CVS’s chosen site. No drugstore serves the immediate area or nearby sections of downtown.

“It’s a void for our services, not only downtown Boise but also the student population,” Herbster said.

The strip center’s developer and owner, Kelly Fisher of Pocatello, said he has a confidentiality agreement with T.M. Crowley that prevents him from discussing the terms of an agreement with T.M. Crowley.

“I still own the building,” Fisher said. “I don’t have a sell date scheduled. We might stay forever. Who knows? If we ever sell the building, we’re going to relocate (the Textbook Exchange).”

Fisher built the 5,975-square-foot Fisher Retail Building in 2009 to house the family’s Textbook Exchange bookstore, which followed a Textbook Exchange his three sons opened in Pocatello in 2001.

The Textbook Exchange on Capitol opened in early 2010 and Tree City Juice and Smoothie Café followed in June 2010. Subway arrived in February 2011. Textbook Exchange reduced its size from 2,966 square feet to 1,801 square feet to create space for Nutrishop, which arrived in June 2014.

“Nothing seems set in stone yet,” Nutrishop owners Tim and Vicki Jolicoeur said in an email about their intentions. “We are business as usual. We are in a holding pattern at the moment to see how and when the chips fall.”

Subway also gave no indication of potentially having to leave.

“At this point, we are happy to be there and happy to stay there,” Subway co-owner Stacy Noakes said. “We have a long-term lease. We’re content.”

Tree City Juice owner Roy Atkinson did not respond to a call from the Idaho Business Review.

T.M. Crowley is in the permitting stage to build Idaho’s first free-standing CVS Pharmacy at Fairview Avenue and Cole Road, which is targeted for a fall 2018 opening, though a construction start date has not been set, Herbster said.

The Fairview and Capitol Boulevard pharmacies would be the first two free-standing CVS stores in Idaho for the nation’s largest pharmacy chain.

CVS only arrived in Idaho in April 2016 with two in-store pharmacies in Target stores in Nampa and Twin Falls.  This followed the CVS purchase of more than 1,660 Target pharmacies in 2015.

CVS has nearly 9,700 stores in 49 states, Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico. Wyoming is the only state now without a CVS, according to the CVS website. T.M. Crowley is the largest developer of CVS pharmacies, with more than 500.

Herbster indicated more CVS pharmacies are likely for Idaho but he declined to name any other locations.

“We want to invest in the city and the state,” Herbster said.