Dollar General expands in region; One planned for Eldred sparks opposition

Posted 8/21/12

REGION — Dollar General currently operates discount stores in Fallsburg, Liberty, Wurtsboro and White Lake in New York; and Honesdale, PA. The company has plans to open four more in our area: in …

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Dollar General expands in region; One planned for Eldred sparks opposition

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REGION — Dollar General currently operates discount stores in Fallsburg, Liberty, Wurtsboro and White Lake in New York; and Honesdale, PA. The company has plans to open four more in our area: in Jeffersonville, Eldred, Beach Lake, PA, and a project for Hawley, PA, that has been put on hold due to issues about truck traffic into the proposed site.

According to the company website, Dollar General operates more than 11,500 stores in the U.S., and more than 600 of those opened in 2014 alone. Most often the openings are smooth, as was the case with the store in White Lake, which opened in July 2013 and was well-received by the community.

But the store proposed for Eldred, which would be located across the street from Peck’s Market and also across the street from the home of Town of Highland Supervisor Andrew Boyar, has sparked criticism.

The Dollar General plan requires two variances: one would allow the company to create fewer parking spaces than called for by the zoning code, and the other would allow the width of the lot to be a bit smaller than called for by the zoning code.

A Facebook page urging readers to “say no to Dollar General in Eldred,” initially had three messages that were in favor of the Dollar General coming, but those were replaced by messages opposed to the building of the store. The page has 288 “likes.”

One of the posts on the page says, “Their labor practices are notoriously terrible (they recently settled with over 2,700 claimants on charges that they violated the Fair Labor Standards Act).”

A website (www.bigclassaction.com) confirms that in October of 2014, the company agreed to pay out $8.2 million to settle a lawsuit regarding overtime pay. The lawsuit charged that the company wrongly labeled some employees as managers so they could avoid paying overtime, yet compelled the manager to work up to 90 hours per week mostly doing low-level tasks such as stocking shelves.

The employment practices of the company also came up during the last election because David Perdue, a Senate candidate from Louisiana, had been the CEO of Dollar General at the time a lawsuit was brought by nearly 2,100 female store managers in 2006. The women sued the company for paying them less than men for performing the same work.

Perdue was quoted by Huffington Post at the time as dismissing the suit because it involved “less than 2,000 people,” whereas the company employed about 70,000. Perdue’s opponent Michelle Nunn opined that 2,000 people seemed like a substantial number to her. Perdue won the election.

There is a lot of speculation in what some are calling the “small-box” discount retail market just now. Dollar General is attempting to purchase the rival Family Dollar chain, which in turn is planning a merger with the smaller Dollar Tree chain.

There is concern among some analysts that if Dollar General purchases Family Dollar, Dollar General will be forced by the Federal Trade Commission to divest itself of a large number of stores in order to comply with anti-trust regulations. This is an angle being played up by the Dollar Tree stores, which see the attempt to buy Family Dollar as hostile.

In December 2014, Dollar Tree issued a press release that said, “The Dollar General bid may ultimately fail because the scope of the unprecedented FTC-required divestiture leads to an unacceptable loss of value….” Dollar General did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

All of this is eating into Wal-Mart’s market share, and the retail giant announced in 2013 it would begin building “small format” stores.

While the small-box stores are popping up all over the country, a few communities think they are not a good fit. A group of residents in Joshua Tree, CA were angered when San Bernardino County officials approved the development of a Dollar General in January, 2013. The residents crowd-funded a lawsuit arguing the Dollar General should have been made to conduct an economic study about how the store would impact the economy of the rest of the town before being allowed to build. A judge agreed and the project came to a halt. That decision is now being appealed.

Meanwhile, expansion in this region continues. The township supervisors in Beach Lake, PA approved plans for a Dollar General store in October. At the time, developer Bob Gage said he expected the store to open in late spring or early summer 2015. “Groundbreaking to grand opening in 120 days is standard operating procedure for Dollar General,” he said. [See related My View on page 7.]

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