Rite Aid closing 31 more drugstores, including 1 on Long Island

Rite Aid will close 31 more stores, including one on Long Island, months after the drugstore chain filed for bankruptcy protection.

The retailer listed the Long Island store, at 335 Rte. 25A in Miller Place, among those on a list of planned closings filed in bankruptcy court on Nov. 28.

The Miller Place store will close Dec. 11, a store employee said Monday.

Rite Aid is leasing the 10,850-square-foot store in a strip center, according to A&G Real Estate Partners, a Melville-based firm that is marketing 105 store locations leased by Rite Aid and 21 that the retailer owns.

A&G is selling the lease assignments and soliciting buyers for the properties Rite Aid owns, including one at 101 Main St. in Sayville.

“A lease would need to have 10 or more years of term, including options [to renew], for us to market” the property, said Mike Matlat, senior managing director at A&G.

There are currently 1,884 Rite Aid stores, including 28 on Long Island, according to the retailer's website.

Headquartered in Philadelphia, Rite Aid has already announced two other rounds of closings that will total 171 stores.

In filing for Chapter 11 in October, the chain asked the bankruptcy court to approve it closing 154 locations, including 12 on Long Island.

But three of the Long Island stores on the list — in Bellmore, Huntington Station and Valley Stream — were already closed.

Court approval of the closings was granted Nov. 20.

Rite Aid added 17 stores to its closing list in November.

Founded in 1962, Rite Aid has had annual losses for several years and has been trying to cut costs with several measures, including closing about 210 stores in the 12-month period that ended on Sept. 30.

The company has paid out millions of dollars in settlements in lawsuits over opioid prescriptions in recent years.

Rite Aid listed $8.6 billion in debts and $7.6 billion in assets in its filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New Jersey.

By Tory N. Parrish

tory.parrish@newsday.com@ToryParrish1

Tory N. Parrish covers retail and small business for Newsday. She has worked at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and Observer-Dispatch in Utica, N.Y.