On Jacksonville's Northside, the Lem Turner Road Walgreens has turned into a full-on bottleneck. Long lines are stretching through the drive-thru and wrapping inside the store as customers from shuttered locations pour into what has suddenly become the neighborhood's go-to pharmacy.
Neighbors say the place is swamped after several nearby Walgreens stores closed. Some customers report getting text alerts that prescriptions were "ready," only to end up in hour-long waits or leaving empty-handed. For a lot of people in this part of town, that Lem Turner pharmacy is now the closest shot at routine medications.
Customers told Action News Jax they have been stuck in long lines and chasing after those "ready" texts that did not pan out. Shopper Ken Badger put it bluntly: "This is the only Walgreens now in this community within a 3 to 5 mile radius." He said he reached out to corporate and got a reply from a manager who apologized and said staffing changes were in the works.
The crunch is not coming out of nowhere. Walgreens rolled out a national "footprint optimization" plan in an Oct. 15, 2024, earnings release that targeted about 1,200 underperforming U.S. stores over three years. Walgreens Boots Alliance said the strategy was meant to shift resources toward stronger stores and its U.S. healthcare services.
City Leaders, Local Pharmacies Scramble For Fixes
At City Hall and in independent drugstores, people are trying to figure out how to keep a pharmacy problem from turning into a full-blown healthcare access crisis.
City Councilmember Reggie Gaffney Jr. warned that local leaders cannot afford to sit on their hands. "We can kind of create a travesty if we don’t get in front of this," he told reporters, according to News4JAX.
Neighborhood pharmacists told the station they are willing to accept transfers for most long-term maintenance medications. The catch, they said, is that regulations around controlled substances and limited staffing make it tough to move every prescription quickly, especially when a rush of patients shows up all at once from closed chains.
Closures Funnel Prescriptions To Lem Turner
Walgreens has already closed several Northside locations, and those moves have funneled patients into the Lem Turner corridor.
USA TODAY reported that the store at 5340 Soutel Drive shut down in May 2025, with prescriptions from that shop transferred to a Lem Turner store. A later closure at 866 Dunn Avenue sent prescriptions to a different Lem Turner address, a shuffle residents say has packed the remaining pharmacies.
What Walgreens Is Saying
Walgreens has told local outlets it is in touch with city officials and trying to blunt the impact of store changes on customers as the company reshapes its footprint.
In a message shared with Action News Jax, a store manager apologized for the delays and said leadership changes were underway in an effort to improve service at the overloaded Lem Turner location.
