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Nancy Wojcik has been calling longtime customers at their homes up North.

"I don't want them to come back to an empty store," said the co-owner of Naples Fifth Avenue Pharmacy with her husband, John Wojcik.

The curtain is closing on the pharmacy at the southeast corner of Fifth Avenue South and Eighth Street South at the end of August, marking the end to yet another Naples landmark that has served generations of families and kept true to a small-town feeling while change enveloped business after business up and down Fifth.

A rental increase of nearly double what she and her husband were paying isn't feasible and so the store will close at the end of August when the lease is up, Wojcik said. The pharmacy counter stopped filling prescriptions last Friday.

"I've been here since 1972," she said. "The store was here over 50 years."

The pharmacy was a Rexall store with a popular sit-down soda fountain before she and her husband bought it and changed its name, even though they left the old Rexall sign on the roof until the City of Naples said it had to go, she said.

"My daughter was in a crib here," she said, pointing to a rear corner near the pharmacy counter and going back 23 years in memories when her daughter, Amy Wojcik, spent many hours in the store. "Customers would come in and take her for a walk. They would come in every day to see her."

Garrett Hubbard / Daily News

A cyclist on Monday rides by the Naples Fifth Avenue Pharmacy, which has been a downtown landmark for more than 50 years and is now set to close at the end of August.

Now during the dog days of summer when an occasional customer stops in, Wojcik's time is spent explaining how the store is closing but all the merchandise, known for its unique items and toys, will be moved to her and her husband's other store, Golden Gate Pharmacy, at 11669 Collier Blvd., just north of Golden Gate Parkway.

The couple have sold their pharmacy files of customers at the Fifth Avenue store to the CVS on Third Avenue South and U.S. 41 but customers can decide where they want to go. Some have said they will go out to their Golden Gate store.

"We had people in tears. Nobody likes change and it is an inconvenience for them all, to say the least," she said.

The Fifth Avenue pharmacy stopped home deliveries a few years ago and was sending out prescriptions by United Parcel Service; Wojcik said she was told by CVS that it would continue the UPS service for those former customers of hers who need it.

She and her husband knew they were going to have to make a decision after being told their rent was going up to $60 a square foot, about double what they have paid during the last three-year lease. The building and others along the block are owned by Westbury Properties Inc., in which one of the principal owners is Naples resident Michael DeGroote.

"It's this corner," she said, referring to the location. "It's prime here. It would have been nice if the pharmacy could stay forever. It's business."

She's heard a new restaurant may take over the space but doesn't know for certain. What is certain is that her business couldn't support that kind of rent and pay salaries of a pharmacist and pharmacist technician and deal with insurance reimbursement cuts and everything else in the health-care system.

Her pharmacist has gone to work for Target and the pharmacist technician, Patti Rockwell, who has worked at the store for more than 10 years, hasn't decided what she's going to do after taking a vacation.

Garrett Hubbard / Daily News

Naples Fifth Avenue Pharmacy technician Patti Rockwell wraps up a purchase Monday at the store where she has worked for the past 11 years. The store is set to close by the end of August.

"I'm going to miss a lot of my customers," Rockwell said. "A lot are sweet people. We're like family here."

People who like to visit Naples have come by in recent years ask all the time what happened to a mom-and-pop store on Fifth and she has to tell them they have been closing.

"The uniqueness of (Fifth), that is all gone," Rockwell said.

But Wojcik said the Golden Gate pharmacy is much larger and can accommodate the merchandise, including her daughter's doll collection that is for sale.

"It will be the same store it basically is (here), just more of it," she said.

Lisa-Jo Brightman, who works at Petunias of Naples nearby, is saddened by the pharmacy's pending closure.

"These ladies are very sweet," she said.

Sal Tenaglia, owner of Regina's Ice Cream Pavilion, isn't sure what's the fate of his business he and his wife started 18 years ago. Their lease comes up for renewal a little more than a year from now.

"It's hard to see these old businesses go," he said. "We had kids who used to scoot around here are bringing in their kids now. It's an emotional thing. There's no two ways about it."