A new Dollar General store is set to open soon in Waverly, despite pushback from neighbors, community leaders and elected officials who say they had a grander vision for a long-vacant space.
Waverly community leaders have been working to foster independent businesses and a distinctive neighborhood feel on the Greenmount Avenue corridor. But with the discount retailer soon to open at 3133 Greenmount Ave., the site of a vacated Rite-Aid, nearby residents and community leaders are rushing to make sure the incoming shop meets community expectations and their elected representatives are looking to draft new rules to limit the creep of discount stores like it.
The company calls the new spot a neighborhood general store, featuring affordable goods as well as fresh produce, but for neighbors and community leaders, the incoming store came as an unwanted surprise.
After the Rite Aid left the neighborhood, many hoped another pharmacy would move in, but the property remained unoccupied for the last several years.
“When we see a vacant building, we need to be assertive in trying to find out what’s next for this property,” said Haydee Rodriguez, who lives a block and a half away in Oakenshawe. “I don’t know that that happened with the former Rite Aid building.”
City Councilwoman Odette Ramos said she only learned of the incoming store because she noticed an item on a Board of Estimates meeting agenda for a permit for tree planters out front.
Ramos asked the agenda item be held until the developer contacted her to discuss what was happening with the property.
“It’s the principle of the matter, you come to the community,” she said. “When something comes in, you can’t just sneak it in and hope that’s okay.”
A community wanted to be included
According to public records, developer Mark Renbaum purchased the property in September 2021 for $490,000. Dollar General is leasing it for 10 years. The private transactions required no public hearings or other city approvals.
Renbaum declined to comment on the sale or the incoming discount store and directed all inquiries to the chain’s corporate office.
“I wish that he had come to the community,” Rodriguez said. “I wish that he picked up the phone and called the elected officials representing this district both locally and at the state level.”
He did hear from neighbors though. Rodriguez was one of several who met with Renbaum after they learned of plans and organized a meeting. He got an earful, according to those who attended.
Diana Emerson of Waverly Main Street hosted the meeting and later commended Renbaum for enduring the “rough situation” and being open to working with the community.
Waverly Main Street is working out details for a memorandum of understanding with the property owner to address the look of the façade, cleanliness inside and around the store and items the store should carry to benefit the neighborhood, according to Emerson.
“While it’s not an ideal situation, I think it gives us an opportunity to hopefully hold the property owner accountable so that the dollar store will also be accountable,” she said.
The community will keep a “watchful eye” on the Dollar General, and if it’s not abiding by the MOU, Emerson is promising to be vocal against renewing a lease in nine years.
“We’re hoping that maybe it can be a model dollar store, and that they can show what a good model partnership in the community looks like,” she said.
But an MOU can’t address one very major concern: an incoming dollar store doesn’t fit with the needs or desires of the community, many say.
‘A slap in the face’
Waverly Main Street published a market analysis last year highlighting needs for the corridor. The analysis identified several areas of business growth including sit-down restaurants, clothing stores, sporting goods and specialty retail. Another dollar store did not make the list.
“We consider it a slap in the face to what we’re trying to do,” Ramos said. “And the fact that they made assumptions that this would be a good thing, it’s terrible.”
Ricky Herman owns Herman’s Discount Inc. on Greenmount Avenue down the block from the incoming Dollar General.
“We are going to lose some business with them coming in even though we’ve been here 25 years,” he said. “We just can’t compete with a national chain. We can’t get the same prices.”
The family-owned shop has been operating in the neighborhood since 1998 along a stretch of Greenmount Avenue dotted with vacant buildings.
“I welcome an open door, just not necessarily this,” he said. “Ideally, we would like to have something that would complement what we have here to make it a stronger, viable business district, as opposed to someone duplicating what we have.
“There’s so many different businesses that could have filled that void. We do need another pharmacy. We do need a pet store. We need somewhere we can get a football. There are different things that could have gone in there.”
Herman is moving away from the sale of discount merchandise, calling the business model “a thing of the past,” and adding that he’s struggled in the last several years to make money at that price point.
He’s bolstering the custom embroidery and screen-printing services arm of the company. The shop is contracting with churches, restaurants and Baltimore City Public Schools on uniforms and promotional gear.
But even as Herman looks to update his business model, he’s not the only discount operation in town.
The new Dollar General joins a nearby Family Dollar, 2813 Greenmount Ave., to the south and Dollar Tree, 5013 York Rd., to the north.
It’s also just up the road from another Dollar General, 2511 Greenmount Ave. In fact, there’s 16 other Dollar General stores in Baltimore and another 50 Dollar Tree and Family Dollar locations in and around the city.
“We don’t need another dollar store,” said Rodriguez of Oakenshawe. “It’s a lesson on how we can be more vigilant to make sure that the next time there’s an empty building, we either have an independent business owner or some sort of community center.”
Ramos is looking into ways the city can make sure what happened in Waverly doesn’t happen again or to other main street communities across Baltimore.
For the community, she identified efforts to update the Waverly urban renewal plan’s design standards, those standards could require incoming businesses along Greenmount Avenue to look a certain way, and plans would need approval.
“So we’d actually know what’s coming,” she said.
But she’s also eyeing an ordinance that would require a whole new layer of the zoning code to address the influx of dollar stores, which is one of the only corporate brick-and-mortar retailers to grow since the Great Recession.
Potential harm to local business
Seventy-five percent of Americans live within five miles of a Dollar General. The company operates more than 18,000 stores in nearly every state, and it’s planning an international expansion.
Dollar Tree, which acquired Family Dollar in 2015, runs more than 15,500 stores.
Critics say the three discount chains have taken a large bite out of local shops in the communities they serve, directly competing with local operators in convenience, home goods and discount retail.
There’s already language in the city’s code preventing big-box stores from opening in certain areas, but a dollar store doesn’t fit the city’s definition of a big-box store.
City zoning code identifies a “Big Box Establishment” as a single-use commercial building which occupies at least 75,000 square feet of floor area.
Ramos said regulations should also address slightly smaller spaces, from 10,000 up to 75,000 square feet. “So we’re working on that kind of thing,” she said, “to try to prevent this from happening in any other main street across the city.”
State Sen. Mary Washington is replicating those efforts in Annapolis.
Washington introduced legislation earlier this month that she described as an effort to promote retail diversity and protect small businesses in Baltimore.
She pointed to Tulsa, Okla. In 2018, its council passed an ordinance to limit the density of “small-box” discount stores moving into the city, unless the incoming store offered fresh produce.
Her legislation directs the city of Baltimore to do something similar, preventing dollar stores from opening new locations within a mile an existing store and only on the condition that its opening wouldn’t burden existing businesses nearby.
“It’s about local governments and state governments partnering to ensure that existing independent retailers can thrive,” she said. “The businesses that come into the community support that vision, and that we don’t saturate our communities with multiple outlets that basically make it impossible for new grocers or local businesses to take root and grow.”
It also requires new dollar stores to enter into a community agreement with neighborhood groups within a half mile of the proposed location, similar to what Emerson of Waverly Main Street is working out with Renbaum, the building owner.
A committee hearing on Washington’s bill is scheduled for Friday Feb. 25 at 1 p.m.
“Communities need to be a part of the economic decisions that are made in their backyard,” Washington said, “and this is a vehicle for that.”
As former Dollar General employee, please don’t let this company tarnish your hometown with its filth.
Let me offer another perspective. A commercial building owner has investment criteria and is looking for reasonable returns. As the article points out there has been significant vacancies in the surrounding area, and the Rite Aid was vacant for a number of years. If better, higher quality tenants were interested, they would have been brought in. At this point in time this is likely the best alternative Mr. Renbaum had available and the community should be grateful to have some of the vacancy filled. The store will be utilized by the residents and the increased activity should spur other retailers to show an interest in the neighborhood.
Revitalizing neighborhoods is a process, and I would argue this is a reasonable first step. Community and legislator input is not needed if the proposed use falls within current zoning. Developers can’t wait for months and months while everyone discusses their individual dreams and desires for each property in their area. I applaud Mr. Renbaum for sitting down and working towards an MOU to address some of the neighborhood’s desires.