Dollar Store Moratorium Considered By Douglasville City Council

DOUGLASVILLE, GA — The future of dollar stores in Douglasville — including a possible 90-day moratorium on new stores while officials study the issue — will be discussed Monday night by the city council.

Lynn Woodward, staff attorney for the City of Douglasville, told Patch that the issue of too many “small box discount stores” — commonly known as dollar stores — came up while considering an unidentified permit application.

Dollar General, Dollar Tree, and Dollar Tree subsidiary Family Dollar are the biggest small-box brands in the United States. The three have 20 locations among them throughout Douglas County, with six alone in Douglasville.

For the purposes of a possible moratorium, small-box discount stores are defined by Douglasville as being retail stores that sell convenience discount items, most for $10 or less. Such a store would be 12,000 square feet or smaller and wouldn’t include a pharmacy or gas pumps, effectively exempting convenience stores and major drug-store chains.

While dollar stores have grown in popularity, they’ve faced a recent backlash from critics who say they target poor communities and crowd out healthier food choices.

“When you have so many dollar stores in one neighborhood, there’s no incentive for a full-service grocery store to come in,” Julia McCarthy of the Center for Science in the Public Interest said in 2019 to CNN.

The dollar-store industry doesn’t see it quite that way. Instead, its representatives emphasize the stores’ benefits of accessibility and low price — especially during the coronavirus pandemic.

“During this time of national crisis, our customers — your constituents — have relied on Dollar General to remain open and to provide them with the items they need at affordable prices in a smaller, less crowded and easy in-and-out environment,” wrote Steve Brophy, vice president of government affairs for Dollar General, in a Monday letter to Mayor Rochelle Robinson opposing the moratorium.

Stonecrest and Stockbridge already have small-box store ordinances, and DeKalb County has placed a moratorium on new stores while studying their effect, Woodward wrote in a March 11 memo to Robinson and council. The City of Douglasville is considering a similar moratorium.

Pointing out that DeKalb has extended its moratorium several times over the last year, Woodward told Patch that “this is a topic that needs to be understood more thoroughly to come up with a suitable solution."

Douglasville holds its council meeting Monday at 6 p.m., with committee meetings starting at 5 p.m., at the Douglasville Conference Center at 6700 Church St. Streaming is available on the City of Douglasville’s website.

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