Bernadette Newman Weaver worked at Walgreens in Vicksburg for 26 years and is glad to see the chain return to the city.

The third Walgreens store in Vicksburg formally opened for business Wednesday with a ribbon-cutting ceremony attended by members of the Vicksburg-Warren Chamber of Commerce.

“I’m glad they’re back,” Weaver said in a brief telephone interview Wednesday.

She said she missed the grand-opening ceremony but had visited the store since its cold opening Friday. “They’ve got a nice store.”

“This turnout is wonderful,” said Frank Waller, store manager. “Business has been great.”

He said the company opened its first store in Vicksburg in 1948.

That Walgreens was in a building in the 1400 block of Washington Street until it closed in the 1960s in favor of a location in Battlefield Village, Vicksburg’s first enclosed shopping mall. That store closed in the early 1990s after most of the mall traffic moved to the newer Pemberton Square mall.

Tyler Hough, Walgreens district manager from Jackson, said the new store will offer all the services for which Walgreens is known, including one-hour photo finishing and pharmacy with a state-of-the-art computer system.

“We have had lots of requests, phone calls to our corporate office, our district office, when are you going to open in Vicksburg. When are you coming back?” he said.

Waller said the new store covers 14,800 square feet of space and has 25 to 30 employees.

Shirley Wilson of Port Gibson made the 30-mile trip to Vicksburg to check out the new Walgreens store.

“I’m glad it’s here. I think it’s nice,” she said as she walked through.

Walgreens operates 4,805 stores in 45 states and Puerto Rico from its headquarters in Deerfield, Ill.

In addition to the automatic prescription refills and nationwide network, the pharmacy has a drive-through window. The pharmacy system is called Intercom Plus and links all pharmacies, keeps customer records and helps the pharmacist prepare prescriptions.

Waller said it makes it possible for Vicksburg customers to refill prescriptions at any Walgreens store in the country. The store will also have access to Auto Prefills, a system that marks monthly medications to be refilled automatically and then calls or e-mails the customer to say the prescription is ready.

“While Walgreens has the same old-fashioned focus on service, it is now also the most convenient and technically advanced drugstore chain in the nation,” company officials said.