Rice’s Drug Store opens on Bath’s Front Street, fills downtown gap

Bath’s downtown finally has a pharmacy again, and the change is immediate for residents who lost Wilson’s Drug Store last year. Rice’s Drug Store opened May 11 at 84 Front St., taking over a basic service that once anchored errands, prescription pickup and day-to-day care in the middle of the city.

Owner Jonathan Rice spent the winter and spring renovating the storefront before opening the independent pharmacy. A grand opening and ribbon-cutting is scheduled for Friday, May 29, giving the new business a public debut just as Front Street regains a medicine counter that had been missing since Wilson’s closed.

That closure left a visible hole in downtown Bath. Wilson’s Drug Store shut down in March 2025 after 109 years in business, and coverage at the time said prescriptions were moved to Walgreens on March 26. Reporting also said owner Johnathan Desjardins cited Medicare and Medicaid challenges. For customers who had depended on Wilson’s long-standing downtown location, the loss was more than sentimental: it pushed a basic errand farther from the city center and made daily pharmacy access less convenient.

Rice’s opening reverses part of that disruption by keeping prescription service in walking distance for people living or working downtown. That matters in a city of 8,835 residents, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s July 1, 2025 estimate, where 25.2% of residents were age 65 or older in the 2020-2024 Census Bureau age profile. In a community with an older population and a compact downtown, a neighborhood pharmacy is not just another storefront. It is part of the local care network.

The new store also arrives against a tougher backdrop for independent pharmacies across Maine. A Maine Monitor analysis of pharmacy licensing data found that pharmacy counts fell in 11 of Maine’s 16 counties since 2013, with the steepest declines in Washington County, down 31%, and Somerset County, down 22%. Separate reporting found that one-third of Maine’s independent pharmacies closed between 2013 and 2023, while one-tenth of all pharmacies in the state disappeared over the past decade.

Against that trend, Rice’s Drug Store stands out as a small but concrete win for Bath’s downtown economy. It does not replace the history of Wilson’s, but it does fill a real service gap, keeps a pharmacy in the city center and shows that a local entrepreneur can still meet a need that larger chains often leave behind.