Dollar stores targeting northern Michigan towns?

Photo: A dollar store appears to be interested in acquiring this lot at the corner of County Roads 667 and 616 in Maple City.

Maple City, Lake Ann residents brace for potential battle with hungry national chain

Jacob Wheeler

Sun editor

Maple City resident Scott Mills, who lives on South Maple St., next to the vacant lot at the northeast corner of County Roads 667 and 616, is organizing neighbors, business owners and concerned residents to convince Kasson Township officials to stop a dollar store from moving into their town.

Mills, who grew up in Maple City, grew suspicious when he saw surveyors from Difflin-Umlor marking corners of the lot on March 27-28. He met the surveyor, spent hours researching, and spoke with Kasson Township zoning administrator Mike Lanham, who confirmed that he had seen preliminary site plans submitted in December for a “Dollar General-type store”. On April 8, Mills saw a worker from an engineering firm in Traverse City marking points for soil borings to test soil composition on the property. The worker confirmed to him that Westwind Construction, based in Spring Lake near Holland, seeks to build a Dollar General on the land. (The Glen Arbor Sun spoke to a receptionist at Westwind Construction, who refused to identify their client.)

I see Dollar General’s business as moving into places where there are a couple local grocery stores and they put them out of business,” said Mills. “Dollar General doesn’t sell fresh foods. This would threaten our local stores and pose and existential threat to Gabe’s. Local businesses add value by keeping dollars in our community.”

Lanham and Kasson planning commission chair Dana Boomer said that no proposal has been submitted yet to develop the land at 667 & 616, which sits in a mixed-use commercial district which allows retail businesses.

They’d have to abide by our size, setback and sign regulations,” said Boomer. “They’d have to go through site plan reviews.”

Kasson Township stipulates that a development within its mixed-use commercial core not exceed 16,000 square feet (page 42 in its Zoning Ordinance). Mills thinks that a dollar store’s building, parking lot of 25-30 cars, plus its sewer, wastewater and easement footprint would exceed 16,000 square feet. Dollar stores, themselves, average 9,100 square feet in size.

In an online letter, Mills encouraged concerned residents to speak during the public comment period at a township board meeting on Tuesday, April 9, at 7 p.m. According to Boomer, the alleged development won’t be on the meeting agenda because “the board won’t speculate on plans that haven’t been submitted yet.”

Dollar stores—which include Dollar Tree, Family Dollar and Dollar General—are expanding in rural, and often economically depressed, towns throughout the United States. “Small box” dollar stores, typically 9,100 square feet in size, specialize in selling cheap commodities and pre-packaged food that undercut locally-owned grocery stores. Dollar stores work with developers and realtors who refuse to disclose their identity when courting land owners.

A dollar store suitor is also trying to acquire land to open a location in Lake Ann. Meanwhile, a 2015 bid to acquire land and open a dollar store on M-22 north of Empire failed when residents revolted and the village council voted unanimously against changing zoning laws that would have allowed the development. Dollar General currently has locations in Frankfort, Traverse City, Grawn, Interlochen, Kingsley, Buckley and Kalkaska. Dozens are strewn across northwest lower Michigan. As of July 2018, Dollar General operated 15,000 stores across the 48 contiguous United States. They are now more numerous than McDonald’s restaurants.

 

Unpopular in small towns

Maple City business owners were unhappy to learn that a dollar store could be targeting their village.

It doesn’t fit the landscape of our small, close-knit community,” said Mary MacDonald, who owns Pegtown Station, a popular restaurant a block away. “We need to band together and keep our eye on this so we don’t let things slide through.”

I personally wouldn’t shop there. I’d rather go to Gabe’s or Bunting’s (nearby Cedar) or Anderson’s (in Glen Arbor). If I need milk I’ll walk across the street to Gabe’s. We have great relationship with them.”

I don’t think it’s a good idea,” said Kathy Gabourie, who has owned Gabe’s Country Market together with her husband Mike for 34 years. “Naturally it would affect our business. This community is too small for it.”

Dollar General landed a foothold next to the gateway arch just outside of Frankfort in 2016 after securing approval from Crystal Lake Township—despite heated opposition from within the village of Frankfort. A 2015 bid for a store in Empire failed after 70 residents signed a petition opposing the development.

My fear about such an enterprise in this village is that they are not flexible with their 9,100-square-foot store (size),” resident Mary Sharry told the Leelanau Enterprise. “Another concern is that if such a business comes into an area and doesn’t succeed, they have no compunction about closing up their medium-size box store. They simply pull out of town and leave a structure there, which could become a derelict building over time.Empire sure doesn’t need more of that.”

Lake Ann Brewing Company owner Matt Therrien was also contacted last month by a downstate realtor with a Lansing-area phone number who has a PO Box in Frankfort and is a member of the Benzie County Chamber of Commerce. She inquired about a commercially-zoned piece of land he owns about half a mile from downtown. Therrien received a high offer for the land but was wary of selling to an anonymous corporation that refused to disclose its identity.

Therrien returned the realtor’s call and said “if this is a Dollar General or Family Dollar, we’re not interested in selling.” Therrien recalled that a 10-second pause ensued and she said “I’ll let the buyers know.” Two hours later he received a text stating that “the buyers find these terms unusual and wish to withdraw their offer.”

The same realtor later inadvertently called Therrien’s cell phone number while pursuing other Lake Ann residents about their commercial properties.

Without knowing who I’m selling to, I’d have to deem it a good fit for my town before I’d get on board,” Therrien told the Sun. “It would otherwise reflect poorly on me, and my beer might not taste as good as before, if you know what I’m saying.”

John Nuske, who owns Lake Ann Grocery, was also alarmed to hear of a dollar store’s interest.

Yes, Dollar General would provide competition for my business,” he said. “But all they do is add some convenience stuff at convenient hours. They might be able to beat me at the price of milk and eggs, but all they’ll have is cheap (stuff) made in China.”

 

Local business killer

Dollar stores have received scathing press recently for preying upon, and exasperating the hard times in small-town America.

A December 2018 story in Fast Company titled “Why dollar stores are bad business for the neighborhoods they open in” reported that the chains are affordable but often lack fresh and health food, and they gut local and independently-owned businesses.

Up until 2015, Haven, Kansas, a town of just over 1,200 people, had one grocery store: the Foodliner, a mom-and-pop store owned by a local, Dough Nech. Around 225 locals a day would cycle through the store, picking up basics like bagged lettuce and chicken.”

That changed when a Dollar General opened in Haven in February 2015. Almost immediately, Nech saw a drop in the flow of customers through Foodliner. By last year, they rang up only around 125 people; sales dropped by 40%, he told The Guardian.This August, the Foodliner permanently closed.”

Dollar General is the fastest-growing retailer in the U.S. and it, along with its competitors Dollar Tree and Family Dollar (which is owned by Dollar Tree), have made a killing in recent years by expanding into some of the county’s most vulnerable communities: small, rural towns, and urban, predominantly black neighborhoods. When that happens, dollar stores essentially take over the market, making it impossible for independent local retailers, like Foodliner, to thrive. And in doing so, dollar stores essentially ensure that people living in the areas they target will struggle to access healthy food. While affordable, dollar stores rarely offer any food beyond highly processed options, and in areas where it’s already difficult to find produce and fresh options (often called food deserts), they don’t do much to change the status quo.”

In the case of Haven, Kansas, The Guardian also reported that Dollar General expected a kickback from local representatives.

When Dollar General came to Haven, Kansas, it arrived making demands. The fastest-growing retailer in America wanted the taxpayers of the small, struggling Kansas town to pick up part of the tab for building one of its squat, barebones stores that more often resemble a warehouse than a neighborhood shop.”

Dollar General thought Haven’s council should give the company a $72,000 break on its utility bills, equivalent to the cost of running the town’s library and swimming pool for a year, on the promise of jobs and tax revenues. The council blanched but ended up offering half of that amount to bring the low-price outlet to a town that already had a grocery store.”

One Kansas small-town mayor opposed Dollar General after seeing what it did to Haven.

Three years later, the company applied to build a similar store in the neighboring town of Buhler, a 20-minute drive along a ramrod straight road north through sprawling Kansas farmland.”

Buhler’s mayor, Daniel Friesen, watched events unfold in Haven and came to see Dollar General not so much as an opportunity as a diagnosis.”

Friesen understood why dying towns with no shops beyond the convenience store at the gas station welcomed Dollar General out of desperation for anything at all, like Burton, just up the road, where the last food shop closed 20 years ago. But Buhler had a high street with grocery and hardware stores, a busy cafe and a clothes shop. It had life.”

How are dollar stores able to sell packaged food at cheaper prices than mom-and-pop stores? They own their distribution networks, reports Huffington Post.

The key advantage over locally owned competition is that dollar stores have their own distribution networks, just like Amazon and Walmart. Being able to buy on a larger scale means dollar stores can sell products at a far lower price than a smaller retailer can get from its wholesalers. Dollar General operates 15 warehouses around the country and is currently constructing two more. In addition to hiring third-party trucking firms, it has its own fleet of trucks that deliver goods to its nearly 15,000 stores. It opened 1,300 new locations last year and had planned for 900 more this year, mostly in rural towns with fewer than 20,000 residents.”

The November 2018 Huffington Post story introduces a few local communities that fought back and either stopped or delayed incursions by dollar stores.

The epicenter of the dollar store resistance might be Chester, Vermont, where residents’ fight against dollar stores made the New York Times in 2012. They were able to fend off Dollar General until 2016, citing local regulations designed up uphold the town’s “character.” Other Vermont towns have made use of a special state law that allows residents to appeal development projects to regional boards. Vermont has been a beacon to other small towns confronting the spread of low-end retail.”

In Joshua Tree, California, a coalition of local business owners and residents sued San Bernardino County over its approval of a Dollar Store development in 2013. They were ultimately rebuffed by an appeals court in 2016, but Celeste Doyle, owner of an outdoor supply store, said the Dollar General still hasn’t materialized. She hopes it stays away.”

Sometimes dollar stores are beaten decisively. Earlier this year, the town council in Buhler, Kansas, voted against a Dollar General after seeing a local food market run out of business by a dollar store in nearby Haven. And the City Council in Tulsa, Oklahoma, enacted zoning restrictions to prevent new dollar stores from opening.”

When Maple City residents gather at the planning commission meeting on Tuesday night to declare their opposition to a dollar store, they may also draw inspiration from their own victory five years ago when a proposed forest canopy development in Kasson Township, near Burdickville, was grounded before it ever left the forest floor.