BUSINESS JOURNAL

Lewis Drug planning downtown store

Jodi Schwan
jschwan@sfbusinessjournal.com
Lewis Drug plans to open at 10th Street and Phillips Avenue.

Lewis Drug is coming back to downtown.

A new store on the northeast corner of 10th Street and Phillips Avenue is planned for next spring, about a block from where the Sioux Falls retailer was founded 74 years ago.

“We like the concept of coming back to the future. That’s where it all started,” CEO Mark Griffin said.

“I like to think we were one of the reasons downtown is the way it is, starting in 1942, and we hope to help shape it 75 years later.”

Lewis Drug’s newest location will be unlike any in the 50-store company, Griffin said.

It’s being designed with a bit of a retro feel and a focus on customers living and working downtown, he said.

“We’ll have, obviously, a pharmacy. We’ll have adult beverages. We’ll have consumable, pick-up items, disposable items for every day basic needs that before you had to drive a mile to get to, perhaps. We want to make it very easy for people that live downtown to stay downtown for their wants and needs.”

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The downtown population has reached a point where it created a market, he added. There are between 10,000 and 12,000 people working there and between 2,500 and 3,000 people living there with more to come.

The return of Lewis will be a landmark addition for a downtown community that has hoped and planned to attract more neighborhood services.

Keller’s Green Grocery, which opens this week, brings a full-service grocery store to the former ballroom of the historic Carpenter building.

Condominium projects under construction such as Washington Square and Jones 421 will add some of the first owner-occupied housing by next year.

“We’ve patiently watched the excitement building downtown and thought the time was right,” Griffin said.

When his daughter, Nikki, moved back to Sioux Falls from Minneapolis four years ago, she immediately noticed downtown was different.

“I love downtown,” said Griffin, corporate vice president. “It’s really going in the right direction and it’s exciting to be part of that.”

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The new Lewis Drug will be 5,200 square feet, which is a little bigger than the Lewis Family Drug stores the company owns in dozens of communities.

It will take part of the former Skelly’s and the entire space that currently is Copper Lounge. Both buildings are owned by Legacy Development.

Copper Lounge plans to close this fall, owner Tim Kant said. Eastwold Smoke Shop, which he also owns in the building, will stay open under its existing lease.

“We had eight great years (at Copper Lounge),” he said. “The opportunity has come up for us to move on and be a part of bringing a business like Lewis Drug downtown that will really benefit the downtown community.”

A closing date has not been set, and customer appreciation activities are planned in the coming weeks.

“We appreciate all our customers,” Kant said. “We’re going to have some things you will really look forward to in the next couple months to celebrate.”

Adding Lewis to the building couldn’t be a better fit, Legacy CEO Norm Drake said.

Lewis Drug plans to open at 10th Street and Phillips Avenue.

“This is absolutely the best tenant we could hope for,” he said. “It’s just going to be a great amenity for downtown.”

While design is just starting, the idea is to create a Lewis with a different look and feel than any of the other locations, said Nikki Griffin, who is leading the project.

“The hope is to reflect the overall downtown aesthetic, which has that great, traditional component with a modern edge,” she said. “We want to blend that. And having the great, old architecture with the brick and high ceilings will lend itself to that.”

The product mix also will be different. Lewis added an expanded grocery section to its store at 1301 E. 10th St. this spring including natural and organic items. Offerings such as almond milk and Greek yogurt also could be sold downtown.

“I think it’s the most vibrantly exciting area to imagine merchandising,” Nikki Griffin said. “And downtown is very much about local business, and I think we are a good match for that. It’s a nice chance to highlight that we are a local business, we are family-owned and we did start there.”

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