You can't blame the pundits for pitying the underdog while sadly shaking their heads at the potential matchup between the drugstores on St. Paul's Grand Avenue.
When the neighborhood discovered that national giant CVS would move directly across the street from Bober Pharmacy and Gift, a mainstay for the past half-century, romantics began rooting for Bober's owner to take a stand against the nation's largest pharmacy.
The alternative would be for Ron Johnson to close his doors. CVS has approached Johnson about buying his shop before the new branch's targeted opening in January. The demise of the avenue's last family-owned pharmacy would strike yet another blow to those protesting Grand's growing crop of chain stores.
"He has the pressure of being an icon," Summit Hill neighborhood resident Merritt Clapp-Smith. "Everyone's looking to him to hold out for the cause of the independent businesses on Grand Avenue."
But Johnson doesn't like to be thought of as a hero or a martyr. He bristles at the platitudes that have defined the chain-versus-independent debate along the beloved shopping destination. And he doesn't want to play the role assigned to him.
"The news media want to write about how big bad George is going to beat up poor little Johnny," said Johnson, 59, the bespectacled owner of five drugstores in the state. "Would I like to see the chains out of Grand Avenue? Yes. But is it probable, feasible or even right?"
Johnson said that though he has been negotiating with CVS, nothing is final. Luckily, or maybe unluckily, he has gone through this before.
When a flashy CVS store - literally flashy, thanks to the building's changing electronic billboard - opened Oct. 30 on University Avenue, Johnson was watching from seven blocks away from another of his stores, the old-fashioned Lloyd's Pharmacy at Snelling and Minnehaha avenues.
With the Midway stores' matchup, he decided to keep his business despite early conversations with CVS. But many have speculated that the across-the-street competition on Grand will be too much for Johnson to bear. The chain has made a habit of buying out independent pharmacies across the country and taking over their customer databases. Locally, that happened as recently as last November, when CVS purchased the Borgstrom Pharmacy near its new store at Payne and Maryland avenues.
Despite a perception that CVS is out to decrease competition, company spokesman Mike DeAngelis said its practices actually help small-business owners who want to retire or get out of a challenging industry. In some cases, he said, the storeowners are pharmacists who decide to work at the new CVS.
"They continue to serve customers and don't have to worry about razor-thin margins and the hassle of running a pharmacy," DeAngelis said.
Many neighbors, however, don't share that benevolent perception.
"It's like a zit on Grand Avenue," said Roz Goldberg, a longtime resident and Bober customer. "They're not trying to play nice or play fair. They want to take over the neighborhood."
Goldberg, a cancer survivor and a self-described working-class hotel worker, said she chooses to fill her prescriptions through Bober even though it's cheaper to mail-order medication through her insurance company. The reason is simple: Her pharmacists know her. They chat with her. They immediately can tell her whether an over-the-counter pill will interfere with her other meds.
She said she wouldn't blame Johnson if he did take the offer from CVS, but she wishes the folks at Bober would defend their store "more openly and aggressively. One pharmacist told me, 'Well, we don't want to get in the middle of it,' " she said. "Are you (kidding) me? You are in the middle of it."
And dead center is Bober's affable Johnson. The Baudette, Minn., native, on most days, works out of his sunlit office above Lloyd's. Whenever reporters call to check out the latest rumors about his situation, he likes to bluntly grumble, "You guys are beating a dead horse."
But more often than not, he shows his good-natured side. When asked about his line of skin-care products called Sather's, he explains why with a smile: Because "I'm a Sather." Upon moving to Minnesota, his Swedish great-grandfather made an irrevocable decision: "There were too many Sathers in the community he moved to, so he changed his name to Johnson," the pharmacist said.
In 1969, straight out of the University of Minnesota's pharmacy school, he landed his first job at Target. Put off by bad-mannered and impatient customers, he realized he wasn't a good fit for the corporate pharmacy. In his late 20s, he bought Lloyd's from Lloyd Jensen.
Over the years, he began to buy or set up new pharmacies in St. Paul, Arden Hills and Rochester. His 70-hour work weeks were hard on his wife, Sheila, and his four children, all now grown. His work ethic continued to push him, though, as he built his business.
"Would I say, 'Oh, this is nice,' or should I get the most out of this for myself and my family?" he said.
He bought Bober in the early 1980s when healthy signs of revitalization were afoot. Over the past five years, his property taxes and value have nearly tripled, he said. Today, Bober is one of his best-performing stores and enjoys a loyal customer base.
Yet he's troubled by the Summit Hill Association's interest in possibly limiting the street's number of "formula businesses." Activists like to point out that locally owned shops keep more money in the community than chains do. But on the flip side, some independent entrepreneurs, from owners of women's boutiques to eyewear shops, say they benefit from the foot traffic produced by the likes of Pottery Barn and J. Crew.
"Why, all of a sudden, are we saying we can't have chains now?" Johnson said. "Everyone's forgetting that there's a Walgreen's already here. Three doors down from me, there's a little chain called Blockbuster."
The soon-to-open eq-life, a Best Buy subsidiary that will sell health and wellness products, also will contain a small PraireStone pharmacy, which are found in many Lunds and Byerly's groceries.
CVS officials, Johnson said, have talked about some fair prices for his store, something that Walgreen's has never done with any of his locations. Mail-order prescriptions, he said, not chain pharmacies, pose the biggest threat to his sales anyway.
That still hasn't stopped a vocal few from wanting him to "come clean" with his plans for his store. A computer-printed sign on his door informing customers that yes, Bober is still in business, caused some alarm when workers took it down one day - probably to clean windows.
"It bothers me that I haven't got the solution," Johnson said. "There's no way that one business on Grand Avenue can change the whole look of the avenue."
Laura Yuen can be lyuen@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5498.
The new CVS at Grand Avenue and Oxford Street will occupy the first floor of the Oxford Hill Condominiums.
The sold-out, four-story development features 31 condos ranging from $259,000 to $649,000 and will open to residents starting in January.
On the ground level, CVS will be joined by a Starbucks, outdoor and survival gear outfitter Helly Hansen and women's apparel store Chico's (which will replace the smaller one next door).
For more information, visit www.oxfordhillcondos.com .
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