
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, March 18, 1995                   TAG: 9503200038
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MAG POFF STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

REVCO PLANS MORE CLOSINGS

In a second round of closings in less than a year, Revco D.S. Inc. said Friday it will shut two of its Revco drugstores in Roanoke and Martinsville on April 1.

The Roanoke store is at Townside Festival at 3613 Franklin Road. It was formerly a SupeRx drugstore.

Tom Dingledy, spokesman for Revco D.S. in Twinsburg, Ohio, said the closings are part of the company's ongoing review of store operations. The stores, he said, "did not meet our standards of profitability."

Revco is closing six stores nationwide today and a third store, at Monroe, Ga., on April 1. Dingledy said there is no specific pattern or plan for closing stores. He said he did not know whether other stores in Western Virginia were slated to close.

The company closed five other area stores Aug. 13 after Revco's merger with Hook-SupeRx Inc. of Cincinnati. Those stores were at Valley View Mall, Orange Avenue and Oak Grove Plaza in Roanoke, Washington Avenue in Vinton and Northgate Village shopping center in Christiansburg. The company said then that those stores were chosen to close because they overlapped trading areas in the combined system.

Prescriptions at the Townside Festival store will be transferred to the Revco drug store at Towers Mall. The company is notifying customers by mail of the transfer of their records.

Edwin C. Hall of Hall & Associates, which manages Townside Festival, said the closing of Revco should have no negative impact on the shopping center in the long run. The drugstore is a major tenant in the 53,282-square-foot specialty center, which includes restaurants, apparel and home furnishings merchants and services on the ground level and offices on the second floor.

Revco has a lease that extends for another 18 months, Hall said. That ensures rent during the time it will take to fill the space, he said.

The anchor at Townside Festival, he said, is Montano's International Gourmet restaurant, not Revco. He said in recent months Montano's has doubled its space in the center and Sound Decision has opened a store. Hall said Townside Festival is a 32-year-old neighborhood service center that has performed very well since it was renovated.

by CNB