Baker City Pharmacy Opening Pushed to Mid-June After Renovation Delays

Renovation and permitting hurdles at the former Pioneer Bank building at First and Broadway streets have pushed Baker City Pharmacy's opening from mid-February to mid-June 2026, a four-month delay that extends how long Baker City will depend on a single pharmacy to serve its entire population.

Pharmacist and owner Bob Coulter, 75, who has run Red Cross Drug Store at 1123 Adams Ave. in La Grande for 42 years, said the delay stems from the demands of adapting a historically significant downtown building to meet current code requirements. The final opening timeline remains contingent on completing inspections and equipment installation.

Coulter, a La Grande native who studied pharmacy at Oregon State University and purchased Red Cross Drug from Les Kimbrell in 1983, called Baker City a "prime example" of a "pharmacy desert" when he announced his expansion plans in December 2025. The situation warranted that description: Baker City supported four pharmacies as recently as a few years ago, and today only the Albertsons grocery-store pharmacy at 1120 Campbell St. remains.

The collapse was rapid. Bi-Mart closed its Baker City pharmacy around November 2021, citing rising medication costs, shrinking insurance reimbursements, and Oregon's Corporate Activity Tax as it exited the pharmacy business. Then Safeway shuttered its Baker City store entirely on May 25, 2025, after the company determined the location was underperforming. Rite Aid, which had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy for the second time in less than two years, added its Baker City location to a closure list shortly after, and that store went dark in early June 2025. The two closures landed within a two-week span. The driver was not a shortage of Baker City customers but structural economics: federal reimbursement rates through programs such as Medicare had made operating a retail pharmacy in a rural market untenable for national chains.

The city moved to remove at least one regulatory barrier. On October 14, 2025, the Baker City Council voted 5-0 to amend zoning rules to allow a pharmacy with a drive-thru to operate in the central-commercial zone covering the historic downtown. The ordinance was crafted specifically to accommodate the planned pharmacy at the former Pioneer Bank building, which had served as Pioneer Bank's corporate headquarters before later passing to Sterling Savings Bank.

Coulter was not the only one to identify the gap. Baker County contracted economic development director Bryan Tweit said in July 2025 that two separate companies were evaluating Baker City sites, both preferring existing buildings over new construction. Saint Alphonsus, the regional hospital system, said in May 2025 it was "evaluating options" for a public-facing pharmacy in Baker City; the organization has made no subsequent announcement. Coulter, drawing on more than four decades of independent pharmacy experience, was the one who committed to a specific address and a concrete timeline.

Once open, Baker City Pharmacy is expected to offer prescription dispensing, over-the-counter products, vaccination services, and medication management, with the drive-thru option providing access for patients with mobility limitations. Patients holding prescriptions from the now-closed Rite Aid or Safeway locations can initiate transfers as soon as the pharmacy opens its counters, with mid-June the current target pending final inspections and equipment installation. Red Cross Drug Store in La Grande earned recognition in a national trade publication for technology adoption and maintains a nutrition center stocked with prescriber-grade supplements, a full-service independent model that Coulter appears to be bringing across the mountains to Baker City.