Boulder City loses a bit of itself

Mike Trask, Las Vegas Sun

Friday, Sept. 21, 2007 | 7:06 a.m.

The big yellow Nevada Drug sign towers over Arizona Street in Boulder City, with newspaper racks below and the community theater across the narrow street. It looks like a scene out of "Happy Days."

Nevada Drug has been part of the small town since before many of its residents were born. It once had a soda fountain, a big hit with teens on date night.

Signs still hang from the ceiling - first aid and oral hygiene in aisle 11, cough and cold in 12 - but there is no merchandise beneath them. The only sign that matters now is the one scrawled across the front window: Available for lease or sale.

For the first time since 1946, the shelves of the downtown store are empty. And a store that helped Boulder City retain the sepia-tinted images of its past - which for decades had been a kind of community crossroads where neighbors caught up on town gossip while picking up prescriptions - is gone.

It's unclear what will take its place. Maybe a restaurant. Maybe a bar. Maybe a dollar store.

Scott Ricci ran Nevada Drug for the past 10 years. But the profit margins kept shrinking. In February, he transferred prescriptions for all regular medicine - which he said had become a losing proposition for his store - to one of the chain-owned supermarkets in Boulder City.

He changed to a compounding pharmacy, making alternative doses and forms of traditional medications. But that wasn't enough for Ricci to continue to make a go of it in the city of 15,000.

So, goodbye on-street parking in Boulder City and hello office complex on West Horizon Ridge Parkway in Henderson.

If location is everything in business, then the corner near Horizon Ridge and Seven Hills Drive is a giant improvement over downtown Boulder City. Ricci figures he'll be able to tap into the 214,000 Henderson residents, as well as customers throughout the valley.

"A lot of people in Henderson and Las Vegas don't have any idea how close Boulder City is," he said, sitting in his plush new offices. "You have this huge population 20 minutes away and probably 95 percent of them have don't know where Boulder City is."

The move took only a day - seven truck loads to be exact.

"It was a business decision," Ricci said.

All that remains is memories.

Many in Boulder City don't realize the store is gone. Last Friday, the doors closed for the final time.

It might have been the last bastion of small business catering to locals in Boulder City's downtown. The restaurants and antique stores tend to draw tourists.

"It's unfortunate if downtown becomes just a place for tourists," said Dennis McBride, curator of the Boulder City/Hoover Dam History Museum. "It then fails to be downtown. It's an entertainment district."

City Councilman Mike Pacini grew up shopping at Nevada Drug, like all those who spent their childhoods riding bikes through town and stopping for candy.

"The little downtown area was kind of a service hub," Pacini said. "The change is exciting. But it's bittersweet."

Ricci is moving forward, albeit while keeping the same phone number.

"That pharmacy in Boulder City was the kind of business I always thought I would own," he said.

But the days of that kind of business being successful might be ending. Through stringent growth controls, Boulder City has kept a lid on its population, a move most in town support.

But everything around it has ballooned, creating new competition and offering greener pastures for guys like Ricci.

That's sad news for Boulder City.

"It was like any small town drug store," longtime resident Ralph Denton said. "Kids used to go in there and have a Coke. Then the giants move in and there goes your small town."

Or, in the case of Boulder City, a small town gets just a little bit smaller.