Walgreens to Close North Houston Distribution Center, Lay Off 159 Workers

Walgreens announced it will close the Houston Distribution Center at 1805 Greens Road, a 500,000-square-foot facility just south of the Hardy Toll Road near George Bush Intercontinental Airport, and begin employment separations for 159 workers on or around June 1, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification filed with the Texas Workforce Commission.

The site sits on nearly 25 acres and was built to suit in 2008, with roughly 10,000 square feet of office space and automated picking and conveyor systems housed in a cross-dock layout, developer Bryant + Stacy Group said. Harris County appraisal records list the same build year and acreage, underscoring that the north Houston center has been a modern logistics asset since it opened.

A Walgreens spokesperson said the company made a "difficult decision to close our Houston Distribution Center" and added that the move is intended to streamline deliveries. "By streamlining service and deliveries from a single source - the Waxahachie Distribution Center - we believe we can better serve our customers while reducing workload for our store teams," the spokesperson said.

The company’s WARN letter to the Texas Workforce Commission likewise framed the action as part of a network review, stating, "As Walgreens continues to work on solutions to help build business momentum and improve the efficiency of our operations, we have looked closely at our distribution center network, streamlining capacities wherever possible to best support our stores." The WARN notice also states that workers at the Houston facility will be offered on-site career fairs and outplacement services as part of transition support.

Consolidation will leave the Waxahachie Distribution Center as Walgreens’ only Texas hub, a change that shifts distribution responsibilities roughly 212 miles north from Houston to Waxahachie. Company materials list 15 distribution centers nationally; after the Houston closure, California would be the only state with two centers. How Waxahachie will absorb Houston volumes and whether capacity upgrades are planned were not detailed in the WARN filing.

The closure follows a string of recent operational moves at Walgreens since its takeover by Sycamore Partners, with public accounts differing on the timing of that transaction — some describing the acquisition as occurring "last March" while others say the company was taken private in August. In recent months the company has cut about 80 corporate roles in Chicago and Deerfield and altered paid holiday policies for many hourly workers, and it previously closed distribution centers in Florida and Connecticut as part of wider restructuring.

The WARN letter filed with the Texas Workforce Commission notifies local officials and the workforce that separations will begin on or around June 1. The shutdown reduces Walgreens’ physical distribution footprint in Texas to one center and leaves 159 local warehouse and distribution employees facing job transitions over the coming months.