Rite Aid in Ardmore—Making Friends Fast

If there’s one thing we have plenty of out here on the Main Line, it’s drugstores.  So it won’t be very difficult to take Rite Aid permanently out of my life.

I already mostly avoid the place as a matter of course. It became my least favorite pharmacy ever since they made their customer card a requirement to take advantage of virtually all sale pricing. Am I really going to voluntarily give my e-mail and contact info to a company that wants to track my purchases, when those purchases potentially include intimate and personal healthcare items?  We’re going to  share details about how often our households need things like dandruff shampoo, hemorrhoid crème, condoms, tampons, and wart medicine, just to save a quarter on a bottle of Pepto? Really?  

If you are a taxpayer in Lower Merion, be aware that Rite Aid is now costing you money.

That was bad enough, but they really blew it this time. In a petulant fit, they have just taken the township of Lower Merion to court to get their way, on a problematic corner for traffic, in a town recently celebrated and for its walkability. (See the Main Line Media News story here.)

You see, Rite Aid and the developer behind the plans for the store wants Ardmore and the township to allow it to ignore all their zoning requirements, and just let the company build anything they please on the corner of Lancaster and Ardmore Avenue. Yeah—Lancaster and Ardmore. The township just spent a bazillion dollars making that intersection a little more user-friendly, and Rite Aid has a plan to screw it up worse than it ever was. 

You probably just got used to how much easier it is to make a left on Ardmore Avenue, and now Rite Aid wants to clog things up again so they can build their superstore. Oh, and they also want to disregard all local requirements on parking spaces, street setbacks, appearance, entrances and exits.

Rite Aid wants to make its own rules.

Why are we supposed to bend over backwards for them? Because we need them?  We need another national chain drugstore like we need a hole in the head. 

If you are a taxpayer in Lower Merion, be aware that Rite Aid is now costing you money.

The lawyers that have to defend this won’t be working for free.

Hey, Rite Aid: You know that saying about the horse you rode in on? It applies to you.

Leave Ardmore alone. In fact, if you left Lower Merion Township altogether, I'm sure there will be very, very few broken hearts.