Questions remain regarding how long it will be before the campus pharmacy is swallowed by York’s new Shoppers Drug Mart.
The campus pharmacy, which has been in York Lanes for the past eight years, had done their yearly renovation when they were notified that their lease would not be renewed this coming July.
“We’ve been notified that our lease [will be] terminated by the end of the month,” says Al Jiwaji, pharmacy owner.
Pharmacy staff believe the Shoppers Drug Mart will also run out the Inkblotz and The General Store in York Lanes, as the company provides the same products and services.
The York University Development Corporation did not respond to interview requests.
The bookstore will be shrinking in space to make room for Shoppers Drug Mart. The Board of Governors met last month and released details on the bookstore in the agenda package.
Since then, some professors have released criticisms.
Ricardo Grinspun, economics professor, says falling revenues do not mean necessarily lower profits, as the bookstore has been successfully decreasing costs and becoming more efficient.
“The proof is that the bookstore remained quite profitable over a period that included three falling revenue years,” he says.
It is true there is a challenging competitive context for bookstores in general, which are under pressure as sales of books have shifted to online sellers and since ebooks have partially replaced printed books, adds Grinspun.
“Still, the York bookstore has the opportunity to remain viable and even thrive given its dominant role in the huge market of students and scholars at York.”
“From the analysis provided to the Board of Governors, it is difficult to disentangle measures that are required to adapt to the changing context and those driven by a market-oriented mentality that is becoming ever more dominant in our university,” says Grinspun.
“In particular, the plans to continue shrinking the bookstore workforce and the loss of retail space that will be re-assigned to Shoppers Drug Mart have not been adequately explained and represent, in my opinion, one more instance where financial and real estate considerations trump academic ones.”
Steven Glassman, director, York University Bookstore, and Printing and Mailing Services, cites additional bookstore financial information, such as ancillary operations, which are expected to be self-sustaining over the long term.
Glassman references the BoG report showing the bookstore’s “roller coaster” operations, breaking down annual surplus/deficit figures for the bookstore over the past 10 years:
“It is also important to note that cumulatively, over the 10-year period shown above, the cumulative financial result is a deficit of $0.63M. So, overall, the past 10 years of actual results is an accumulated deficit of well over half a million dollars.”
“This is on top of the cumulative deficit that preceded the 2006-2015 period. As at the end of the 2014/15 fiscal year, the total cumulative deficit for the bookstore was $1.34 million. This illustrates clearly that the bookstore has been challenged to ‘break even’ over the longer term.”
The financial challenge for the bookstore is the declining revenues over time, adds Glassman.
“Again, looking over a 10-year period of actual revenues going back to 2006, the story becomes clearer.”
“Over the last few years, a further decline in revenues was experienced such that by 2015, total annual revenue (as noted in the BofG document) stood at $15.9M. Looking over the period 2006 to 2015, the total decline in annual revenue was $6M, or a drop of 27 per cent over that period. This is a significant decline, and perhaps helps put the decision to reduce the amount of space needed by the bookstore into context.”
Ryan Moore, News Editor
Featured image courtesy of Michael Zusev, Photo Editor
