Dollar General prepares to close

by Donna M. Webb
Grand Island Dispatch, December 8, 2006

Another Island business will be closing its doors in the next few months – the Dollar General Store at 2399 Grand Island Blvd. Right now, everything in the store has a liquidation price of 10 percent to 40 percent off, except for food, paper products and diapers.

A store clerk, who wished to withhold her name, explained that employees were notified of the impending closure last week. It is expected that Dollar General will close around the middle of February. The actual date will be dependent upon how quickly the inventory is sold. The clerk said, “As the stock diminishes, the discounts will probably increase, but I don’t think that will be until after the first of the year.”

According to the clerk, Dollar General has more than 8,000 stores across the United States. The Grand Island location is one of 400 small-format stores in the country that will be closing. She added, “They (Dollar General) have plans to build larger stand-alone stores.” These would not be located in strip malls, as the current store is.

This clerk did not feel that the lack of profitability was due to the competition on the Island from the other two dollar stores; because in her opinion, there is enough variety in the merchandise that each store offers. The only other Dollar General store that will be closing in Western New York is the one at Colvin and Eggert roads in Tonawanda.

The chain was founded in the late 1950s. The first store was built in Goodlettville, Tenn., the location of the chain’s headquarters. Personnel who will be losing their jobs have been or will be offered positions in other Dollar General stores. There are six employees at the Grand Island location. When asked how she felt after she was notified about the closure, another clerk said: “It didn’t really bother me much. We are disappointed. I have only been here a couple months, so I don’t have much invested in the store.”

A third employee, remarked, “I wasn’t happy about it, obviously. We feel bad particularly for our elderly customers who have difficulty driving off the Island. It is kind of sad, really.”

Customer Judy Martineck, shops regularly at this Dollar General store. “I always come in here,” she said. “They have good prices.” Later, she added, “It just makes you feel bad when businesses on the Island don’t make it. I try to support our Island businesses all the time.”

Martineck feels that companies here suffer because the town center is not located adjacent to the water, like other small townships near the lakes or the Niagara River. “That is what makes these little towns unique. . . . There is . . . not the ambiance (on the Island) that people look for, and I think that is part of the problem,” she said. Martineck surmises that Grand Island’s town center developed where it is because that was a more centralized location for all the farms that once existed here.

Two other customers who shopped at the Dollar General store this week were overheard to say: “Another good one bites the dust” and “I hate to see it close. I’m sick about it. This is a wonderful (store).”