The Walgreens near 23rd Avenue South and South Jackson St. is almost barren, with shelves close to empty and few people walking through the store. In one corner, Ms. Shirley, a longtime Central District resident, sat at the Walgreens photo kiosk, heartbroken. She had received a letter in the mail saying her prescriptions would soon be filled at a Walgreens on Rainier Avenue South in Columbia City, nearly 3 miles away. But when her phone died, she came to the store on 23rd and Jackson to charge it. That's when she learned the news: This Walgreens was closing.
Ms. Shirley reminisced about the once-thriving small businesses that used to exist at the intersection, including a hardware store, cleaners, a flower shop, a beauty supply store, and a cafe.
"But it's nothing here in our area. I mean, the area is gone, so, yeah, it's hard," she said.
Located in the heart of the Central District, this Walgreens has been open for nearly 30 years. Its pharmacy is the last one remaining in the CD. The store, along with the pharmacy, are slated to close May 19 at noon.
The coming closure will follow the recent shuttering of other businesses at the intersection. An Amazon Fresh, which replaced Red Apple, abruptly closed in February. A Starbucks coffee shop shuttered in July 2022. Now the intersection, once an anchor of the famous jazz district that ran along South Jackson Street and a center for Black-owned businesses, will sit emptier than it has in recent memory.
But some businesses still remain, including AutoZone, Simply Soulful Cafe, and Chase Bank.
Residents in Judkin Park in need of a pharmacy will find their nearest options at Quynh's Pharmacy in Little Saigon or Safeway on Madison Street and 23rd Avenue, which also has a grocery store. While there are several small convenience stores and markets nearby, the nearest grocery stores are PCC Community Markets (23rd and East Union Street) and Grocery Outlet (Martin Luther King Jr. Way and East Union Street).
For decades, segregation and redlining made the CD one of the very few places Black residents could live in Seattle. According to census data, in the 1970s the Black population in the area was as high as 90%. Now, in the 2020s, gentrification has pushed people farther south, and the Black population in the CD sits under 20%.
As the fate of the spaces Walgreens and Amazon Fresh once occupied remains unclear, community members question what happens when businesses leave and force residents to survive without access to basic needs in their neighborhood.
Ms. Shirley repeatedly talked about the grief she felt over the continuing closures in the community and how people like herself would be disenfranchised.
"It's very sad because our neighborhood and our district is gone. It's just like we never existed," she said. "They disrupted the central area here and moved everybody and everything out. There's so much history, and it was a good family neighborhood."
Barbara Boyd, who waited at the bus stop in front of the Jackson Apartments, had stopped by the Walgreens the same day as Ms. Shirley, and Boyd also learned about the closure only after she walked in.
"I was disappointed. My jaw almost dropped on the ground when they told me," Boyd said. "Then, when I was trying to get to Amazon to get some candy, they're gone too. People are just gonna have to get on the bus and go farther out," she said.
"It's been here for a long time, so of course it's sad, but then at that same time, there's not no other stores in the neighborhood," said Gio Walker, a security guard who works at Walgreens and other businesses at that intersection. "This whole neighborhood is going to be affected. People aren't going to be able to get their prescriptions."
Walgreens did not respond to requests for comment about the closure before this story was published. When contacted about the closure of Amazon Fresh, Amazon directed the Emerald to a statement that says the company plans to focus on online grocery delivery and the expansion of Whole Foods Market. Amazon did not respond to any questions about the future of the closed Amazon Fresh at the intersection.
Residents in the neighborhood now have fewer local options to buy groceries. Since the Amazon Fresh closure, business owners like Desiree Chinn, of Seattle Fish Guys, have noticed less foot traffic in their restaurants.
"Parking is already hard. People used to park at Amazon, go grocery shopping, and stop here," Chinn said.
Yet even with the changing business landscape, one topic still remains potent: crime in the neighborhood.
In recent years, the area has experienced some high-profile incidents. A 4 Apple Learning Center, a preschool, had its front window shattered in a 2023 drive-by shooting. In 2024, Seattle Fish Guys had hundreds of pounds of smoked salmon stolen.
Appollonia Washington was born and raised in the Central District, and she owns A 4 Apple Learning Center, located near the northwest corner of 23rd and Jackson Street. The shooting happened while she and her students were in the preschool. She says she noticed an increase in police presence after the shooting.
Some in the neighborhood even tie local illegal activity to actions that occur 11 blocks west, at 12th Avenue South and South Jackson Street, which has become a hot spot for drug use and crime. The City of Seattle installed its controversial surveillance technology in the area as a way to deter illegal activity. Some suspect the goods sold on the streets there came from Walgreens and Amazon Fresh on 23rd and Jackson.
"Even on 12th Avenue, all that [activity] trickles up and down. [People] used to go to the Walgreens and steal, go down, and come right back up. The Amazon, same thing," said Walter "Wally" Washington, owner of Wally's NW Soul Experience. (Walter Washington and Appollonnia Washington are not related.)
"It's harder to live here," said Chinn of Seattle Fish Guys. "Housing cost is an issue, crime is an issue. But I try not to make it a negative thing, because when we grew up here, people said, 'The CD is the hood.' But, I mean, crime is everywhere, and I don't want to just label it in the CD." Chinn added, "Yes, a lot of things happen, but it's bad everywhere."
Gentrification occurs when higher-income residents move into historically low-income areas, and depending on who you ask, gentrification can be good or bad.
Cleven Ticeson views it as a positive.
"People were able to get advantages by selling [property and homes] their parents or their grandparents had purchased way back then, because if they purchased it for $10,000 and now it's worth over $1 million, then that was a great advantage," Ticeson said. "Even though it did make it appear there was more gentrification, it was still a great advantage. Everybody really won."
Others say it has its downsides.
Appollonia Washington says that on one level, the sense of community feels less familiar. Before, she says, it seemed as if everybody knew everyone in the CD, that it felt like a tight-knit community. "The Red Apple, I knew everyone's names, they knew me since I was a little girl and watched me grow up and become a business owner. And it was that type of community where you could walk into a store, and everyone knew everyone," she said.
Darnesha Bowman, who once considered opening a business on a corner of the intersection, agreed. Bowman says the effects of gentrification are sad and unfortunate because they leave people without access to grocery stores and pharmacies that are within walking distance.
"Being someone that used to walk those streets as a kid, that visited that Red Apple after church, that would spend so much time in that parking lot — and it was always like a little family reunion in that parking lot," Bowman said. "You would see people from church, the community. … It just felt safe and like home for me."
"It doesn't look the same, doesn't feel the same as when I grew up," she added. "It's not going to come back to that. But how do we look forward and recreate it somewhere else?"
While there's nostalgia in the CD for how it used to be, some want to move forward and create a community elsewhere. Others want to strengthen the current neighborhood.
"Our Black community can recreate this community in other places, it doesn't have to be there," Bowman said. "We can create Black business hubs in other places around the city. We have to think bigger."
"We were only forced to be there because of redlining," she added. "But there are other areas around the city [where] we can create space for ourselves."
But some who operate Black-owned businesses there want to preserve the community.
"Businesses and community organizations that are around now, they're trying to bring that back, making sure we all have partnerships," Apollonia Washington said. "And how we can work together to make sure that our area feels strong and safe for our babies today and for the future."
Walter Washington shares this same goal. He's committed to creating mentorship opportunities for elementary and middle school children, along with connecting high school students with internship and apprenticeship opportunities.
"We're trying to create a neighborhood, we're trying to create that type of thing where I remember as a kid: I could walk into a restaurant, talk to the employees and everybody that comes in, and they're part of the family. It's bigger than the food," Walter Washington said.
"That's the type of energy that we want, because we don't have that, we don't have a community," he added. "We're not waiting on the politicians no more, we're not waiting on the resources. … We're going to do it ourselves. We're tired of everybody telling us what's best for us. We know what's best for us."
We're building a newsroom rooted in community, not corporate backing. Help us raise funds to hire our first-ever full-time reporter and grow our capacity to cover the South End. Donate today.