Walgreens East Oakland Closure Shows City Of Oakland Lacks Business Retention Program It Once Had

Walgreens East Oakland Closure Shows City Of Oakland Lacks Business Retention Program It Once Had
East Oakland Walgreens is closing and here comes Oakland politicians and residents to complain that the organization is against poor black folks. The truth is that Walgreens planned the store closures back in 2019, and the City of Oakland was too asleep at the wheel to pay attention to the news. August 6, 2019 was the date that Walgreens announced its plans, and as part of a Securities And Exchange Commission Filing. The wording was this: On December 20, 2018, Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc. (the “Company”) announced a transformational cost management program that is expected to deliver in excess of $1.5 billion of annual cost savings by fiscal 2022 (the “Transformational Cost Management Program”). This current report is being filed to supplement the Company’s prior disclosure, which was included in the Company’s Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarterly period ended November 30, 2018 and subsequent filings with the SEC. The Transformational Cost Management Program, which is multi-faceted and includes divisional optimization initiatives, global smart spending, global smart organization and the transformation of the Company’s information technology (IT) capabilities, is designed to help the Company achieve increased cost efficiencies. To date, the Company has taken initial actions across all aspects of the Transformational Cost Management Program. These actions have initially focused on the Company’s Retail Pharmacy USA division, the Company’s retail business in the UK and the Company’s global functions. Divisional optimization within each of the Company’s segments includes activities such as optimization of stores. The Company previously announced plans to close approximately 200 stores in the United Kingdom on its earnings call for the fiscal quarter ended May 31, 2019. Following a review of the real estate footprint in the United States, which review was also announced on the Company’s earnings call for the fiscal quarter ended May 31, 2019, the Company also plans to close approximately 200 locations in the United States. That bottom sentence should have caught the eye of The City of Oakland but it did not. Where was Oakland to plan for the change? Answer: no where. Oakland needs a true economic development effort and not the sad small collection of offices with “economic “ in their names. I have said this last year and before: Oakland does not know how to do economic development anymore and it shows. Bye Walgreens. We need to replace you but will we? Stay tuned.
via YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKG1MwgLR-c