The nation’s second largest “dollar store” chain intends is filling up several storefronts in a Windsor shopping center, creating one of the Virginia company’s larger locations.
One of the nation’s largest “dollar store” chains is gearing up to fill a gap in its coverage of Sonoma County and at the same time is solving a long-running problem with vacancy in the Windsor shopping center.
Work is underway to bring together seven spaces on the north side of the Raley’s grocery store in the Lakewood Shopping Center as a 13,000-square-foot Dollar Tree location. It would be on the large side for the Chesapeake, Virgina-based retailer, which noted its stores typically have 8,000–10,000 square feet but can can be as large as 12,000 square feet.
This will be Dollar Tree’s first location in the town and 36th in the North Bay. It fits between its farthest-north Sonoma County store, in Healdsburg, and its five locations in Santa Rosa.
The company didn’t respond to requests for details such as the opening date and number of employees for that location. The retailer had been hiring salespeople for the Windsor location as recently as Tuesday, but those openings are no longer active.
The sign on the door said the store will open at 9 a.m. July 31.
The Dollar Tree lease, signed Jan. 21, took up the last remaining retail space in the nearly 108,000-square-foot center, according to John Schaefer, an agent with Keystone Real Estate Advisors who has been marketing the property for 14 years. After a building that once had a gym before the pandemic was filled by Anytime Fitness and by Racks and Cues Billiards and Brews, Dollar Tree’s spaces, tucked out of sight from the main parking lot, had been intermittently occupied for years.
“We filled up the whole thing,” Schaefer said.
Dollar Tree has 9,016 locations across in the U.S. and Canada, including 146 opened in its fiscal first quarter, ended May 3. That’s not including the 7,622 Family Dollar locations it sold for $1 billion deal to two equity firms, in a deal completed at the beginning of this month. Rio Vista in eastern Solano County has North Bay’s only Family Dollar location.
Even with that divestiture, Dollar Tree remains the second-largest among the deep-discount chains. Years ago they were five-and-dime stores, selling products for 5 or 10 cents, but shifted to $1 but with rapid inflation in the past few years shifted into products priced at a few dollars.
But not all ultradiscount chains have survived. For example, last year Big Lots scaled back and 99 Cents Only closed down. Dollar Tree was among the bidders on the shuttered locations, picking up 162, including three locally in Rohnert Park, Vallejo and Vacaville. Dollar Tree also won the bid in bankruptcy court for a former Party City location in Santa Rosa, among the 695 locations closed nationwide.
Dollar Tree’s net sales last year were $17.6 billion, up 4.7% from a year before overall and 1.8% based on performance of comparable stores.
The leader in the category is Dollar General Corp., with $40.6 billion in net sales last year, with comparable store revenue up 1.4%. In early June the Tennessee-based company reported 20,594 Dollar General, DG Market, DGX and pOpshelf stores across the U.S. and Mi Súper Dollar General stores in Mexico. Those include 199 in California, with local stores in Cloverdale, Vallejo, Lakeport and Clearlake Oaks.
Price is the top concern for 77% of shoppers surveyed in Progressive Grocer’s latest study on consumer spending.
Where are they shopping among the deep discounters? The trade publication pointed to metrics by Chicago-based consumer data firm Numerator that showed Dollar Tree was frequented by 79% of U.S. households last year, 85% of them return and bought an average of $290 over those 12 months. By comparison, Dollar General had 60% household penetration, 80% return rate but $522 average annual spending.
Jeff Quackenbush covers wine, construction and real estate. Reach him at [email protected] or 707-521-4256.
