Bastrop’s Lock Drug pharmacy shuts doors after nearly 50 years

‘CVS just made me an offer that I couldn’t refuse,’ owner says.

— Just shy of its 50-year anniversary, the Lock Drug pharmacy — a longtime fixture of oldtown Bastrop — shut its doors for good Wednesday.

Like many small, independently run drug stores closing across the nation, the store is handing over its 2,500 customers to CVS.

“CVS just made me an offer that I couldn’t refuse,” said John Mohrman, who’s owned the store since it was sold to him in 1979 by the store’s founder.

The closure comes three years after the shop moved from its original downtown location, where it had been for 45 years, to Texas 71.

“I told my employees when we moved down here to 71 from downtown that I had a chance to sell then, but I was keeping the store open for the employees,” Mohrman said. “But it’s just been a money drain, and I just can’t stand the drain any longer.”

The reasons behind the closure have been many, Mohrman said. Medicaid reimbursement rates from insurance companies have plummeted over the past several years, while other insurance companies with exclusive contracts at CVS pharmacies require that prescriptions be filled at CVS locations.

Also, Bastrop’s high tax rates have been hard for the store to grapple with, Mohrman said, and within the past four years, the pharmacy lost its biggest customers — the county jail, local nursing homes and a community health

LYNDA M. GONZALEZ / AMERICAN-STATESMAN Lock Drug pharmacy employee Earlene Simons hugs a customer goodbye as the Bastrop drugstore, after 49 years in business, announced it was closing its doors. Many local residents say it’s “an end of an era.”