Photo credits: Kyle Bailey and Scott Carroll:

June 11, 2025 3:50 a.m.

In the KQEN Business Spotlight:

With the closure of the last Rite Aid store in Roseburg on Tuesday, Rite Aid and its predecessor Payless Drug Stores, has ended over 60 years of service to the Roseburg area.

Payless, at the corner of Southeast Washington Avenue and Southeast Jackson Street was constructed around 1963. Previous buildings near that location, including a junior high school, were destroyed in the Roseburg Blast of 1959. Some information indicates that Payless had a prior store a few blocks north on Northeast Jackson Street, but News Radio 93-9 FM and 1240 KQEN has not been able to confirm that.

The parent company of Payless Drug Store was purchased by Rite Aid in 1996. The store’s name changed later. Rite Aid moved to a new building two blocks away on Southeast Stephens Street in 2005. The prior location has been vacant ever since.

The newer downtown store was closed in June of 2023 only weeks before Rite Aid filed for bankruptcy protection and announced a plan to shutter hundreds of stores nationwide. The building remains vacant.

Across town, Payless, and later Rite Aid, operated a second store which was added after the construction of the Roseburg Valley Mall in 1981. In late May it was announced that the Garden Valley Boulevard Rite Aid was closing as well. That decision came after Rite Aid Corporation and its subsidiaries began voluntary Chapter 11 proceedings in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey.

Over the next few months, all Rite Aid distribution centers nationwide are slated to close, with all stores either shuttering or being operated by a new owner.

In another sign of changing retails environments, the now former Rite Aid location on Northwest Garden Valley Boulevard sits next door to the former JoAnn Fabrics and Craft store, which also recently closed.

These moves leave Roseburg with even more vacant retail space.