Dollar General proposed for downtown Fort Bragg location.
On August 20, 2020, local landowners Thomas and Bessie Carine filed a planning application form with the City of Fort Bragg. “The proposed project is a 9,100 +/- square foot Dollar General retail store located on 1.033- acre site, built in a single phase. The project is located at the corner of South Franklin Street and Maple Steet (APN#008-172-09-00). Loading/deliveries will occur at the north western corner of the building/site and an adequate area is provided for truck staging and movements. Operating hours are generally 8:00 AM to 9:00 PM. seven days per week. There are generally six to eight employees, with four on the largest shift. The number of customers at any given time is typically in the 10-12 range.”[1]
Three trees on the currently vacant lot on the west corner of Maple and S. Franklin will be removed in order to build the project in “a single phase”. There will be a 30 car paved parking lot. The loading zone is located on the west (parking lot is approximately the size of the store building) [2]
Replaced trees are projected to include 26 fifteen gallon size trees: three Big Leaf Maples, seven Shore Pines, three Red Alders and thirteen Chitalpa. Over a hundred five gallon screening shrubs: Manzanitas, Rock Rose, Ceanothus and others. 60 plus one gallon grasses and perennials including Fuchsia and Daisy. [3]
What is Dollar General
According to Wikipedia Dollar General “began in 1939 as a family owned business called J.L. Turner and Son in Scottsville Kentucky… in 1955 the name changed to Dollar General” as of January 2020, Dollar General has 16,278 stores across the contiguous US. Dollar General sells a wide variety of retail from name brands – Clorox, Procter & Gamble, General Mills, Pepsi - as well as their generic store brand DG. Many stores carry grocery, candy, pet food, baby needs, beauty hair and skin care, makeup, housewares and laundry, towels blankets and pillows, men’s and women’s apparel. Dollar General plans to expand its produce offers nationwide.[4]
Dollar Tree, Family Dollar and Dollar General are owned by the same company since 2015. The companies are now the largest dollar store operations in the country with a combined 30,000 stores in the U.S.
Criticism of Dollar Stores
“Perpetuating economic distress” while dollar stores occasionally fill a need in low income communities, they are seen not “merely a byproduct of economic distress. They’re a cause of it.”[5]
A number of cities and towns across the nation are passing laws that limit the expansion of dollar stores citing they create a “food desert”. Dollar general only offers fresh produce in 4 of its massive 47 state coverage[6]. California is not on the list of having a “fresh distribution facility” though it does boast 266 Dollar General stores. Dollar Tree, in comparison, boasts 342 stores in California[7]. There is one already in Fort Bragg, at the Boatyard Shopping center; corner of Hwy 1 and Hwy 20.
Workers safety questionable and Sanitation Concerns.
Head of worker safety Debbie Berkowitz, who has studied workplace violence through the National Employment Law Project, says “Dollar General is a company that has a business model based on essentially breaking the law and cutting corners when it comes to basic worker safety”. [8]
“Despite receiving more than 100 safety and health violations at stores nationwide since 2010.. the company has still failed to take corrective action” says Dave Olah, director of OSHA’s Harrisburg PA Area Office.[9]
Josh Bernstein OSHA’s acting director in Fort Worth Texas says ““Dollar General stores nationwide have repeatedly been cited for exposing their workers to hazards posed by overstocking issues, while promising time and again to take corrective action, yet workers continue to be exposed to unnecessary hazards”[10]
Dollar stores across the nation appear to be infested with rodents[11] and other questionable sanitation concerns such as rotting food, live and dead mice in storage rooms, behind cash registers and droppings on shelves have led health officers to shut down dollar stores.
Glassdoor, which is an anonymous review site where employees can rate companies, gives Dollar General a 2.8 out of 5. Citing “very overworked no help from upper management” “Long hours for some, way shorter for others” “minimum wage and dirty bathrooms”[12]
Do Fort Bragg community members approve of this business model in town?
Far from the idyllic coastal getaway that many flock to, Dollar General and its various incarnations are an extremely controversial topic, with many pointing to the nationwide crisis’s of health and safety concerns, worker complaints, and the degrading of the mom and pop retail store that are the backbone of many small towns. It is a valid question, in the age of “shop local” and many of our local icons shuttering permanently, do we want to import an unrestrained amount of disposable goods into town and gain a meager 6 to 8 new local jobs? Those jobs of questionable safety and sustainability.
Do we find ourselves needing to “keep up with the Joneses” and be like Willits and Ukiah with their access to low cost merchandise for low income town?What does that mean for Fort Bragg if we “need” another low income retail shopping center?
From the Fort Bragg City website: “Please contact Community Development at 707-961-2827 or Tsar@fortbragg.com if you are interested in more information about these projects.”[13]
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_General#Merchandise
[5] https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/19/business/dollar-general-opposition/index.html
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_General#Operations
[7] https://www.dollartree.com/locations/ca/
[10] https://advancedsafetyhealth.com/blog/osha-after-dollar-general-stores-again/
[11] https://www.dispatch.com/news/20190626/rodent-infestation-closes-dollar-general-in-hilltop , https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffsb&q=dollar+general+rat+infestion&ia=web
[12] https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Dollar-General-Reviews-E1342.htm
[13] https://city.fortbragg.com/486/Active-Planning-Permit-Applications
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