We had a neighborhood dilemma, stood up against it, and we lost

[dutch508]

Star Member Mira (19,192 posts) http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027763368

We had a neighborhood dilemma, stood up against it, and we lost


A large flower shop, built only 7 years before, was demolished after the flower shop moved and sold the land and building to Family Dollar.
We are an older neighborhood, historic, in NC, we are very diverse and wonderful. We fought tooth and nail with meetings, with petitions, the city council, and with hundreds of yard signs of “Family Dollar / NO”
It made no difference.
The site was razed and the store was built and in a week it will be open.

On a fence bordering the parking lot over which they have no control and that they do not own words started to appear. They were individually lettered and randomly nailed up. They did not make sense, during construction more words appeared, one every now and then, and this week it began to coalesce and read:

"Why would Family Dollar build a store in the middle of a neighborhood that asked it not to?
That’s what a 16 Billion Dollar corporate Bully does!”

As you can see it is a neighborhood full of artists.
That’s how we can make ourselves feel a little better, because they cannot take it down. And our not patronizing the store will make a difference to their not having listened.

 

Did these stalwart citizens buy the land? Nope. A photo of the fence is over at DU. It's too boring to bring over.

Star Member Mira (19,192 posts)
4. They were foolish to follow through. Driving through the neighborhood street there were literally parts where every single yard had the sign. They will not make a go of this store. We don't even want to be SEEN going in there LOL

Odds are it will do ok.

virgogal (8,093 posts)
43. Most of my neighbors shop at Dollar Tree,as do I.

They have some fantastic deals and most of the shoppers are middle class.

I agree that they don't belong in a residential neighborhood---no retailer does.

It wasn't residential. It was zoned commercial as there was a flower shop on the lot previously.

BillZBubb (9,375 posts)
6. In a red state, big money rules.

Heck, the way things are going, soon in every state big money rules.

Star Member Lifelong Protester (6,420 posts)
9. Love your neighborhood signs

hate Family Dollar, as they exude greed. They came to our town, too. A little town in the middle of the Great River Road. A lot of people did not want it. I will not go there, and I hope all the folks that were against it also withhold their dollars.

murielm99 (16,562 posts)
12. We have a Dollar General.

It is a dump. The merchandise is third rate. The store is dirty. Most of the workers are indifferent.

We lost the grocery store in our small rural community a few months before the dollar store came in. People go to the dollar store because there is nothing else. If we run out of one item, like toilet paper, there is nowhere else to go, unless we want to travel twelve miles one way.

I end up in the place about once a month. The rest of the time, I combine my trips so that I don't have to use the place.

For a long time, the parking lot had more craters than the moon. We have local man who rides a scooter because he cannot drive after a stroke. He was injured in the parking lot. There was a financial settlement. I know only that there was a settlement. His daughter told me the rest of it is confidential. But now their parking lot has been fixed.

I wish that eyesore and blight on the community would go away.

soon these horrid workers will make $15.00 an hour.

Star Member hfojvt (37,020 posts)
19. i've been to a lot of them

never seen one that was really dirty. Although this one was brand new about four years ago. Three years ago, I offered to work for them, about an hour a night after they close - cleaning the floors. I've been a school janitor for about twelve years. I never heard from them, and I notice the floors are not cleaned very well.

I'm usually friendly with the workers, but they come and go, and they tell me they get paid less than Wally World.

As for 3rd rate merchandise? Well, a can of pringles or a box of cereal or a bottle of pop are pretty much standard anywhere and DG has better prices than most grocery stores. The candles and the sprinkler I got from there seem to work just fine.

 

ridgenvalley (5 posts)
21. This op hit home.

My rural PA county has had 6 Family Dollars open in the past 2 years, putting a new strain on the already struggling Mom & Pops. But the bastards know it's an area down on its economic luck, and they have obviously made the decision to take full advantage. I still shop at the M & Ps, but the writing is on the wall. My s.o.jokes that if we ever get a Five Below store it'll be a sign that good times are back again.
I wish we had stood up to the flood of FD stores, but frankly, it was a blitzkrieg assault. Nobody realized what was happening til it was over. Kind of like the fracking....

ridgenvalley (5 posts)
29. Ooh, ouchy poo.

The fact that communities were perfectly happy before the FDs came and used corporate clout to undercut the M&Ps -- the M&Ps who btw are our longtime neighbors and whose kids play soccer with our kids, evidently makes no difference to you.
I feel sorry for that attitude. You have a sad idea of what community is about, IMO.

Star Member Mira (19,192 posts)
33. The most infuriating part to us is that less than a half a mile, on the left is another one!!!!!!! in a legitimate shopping center.
But it makes it easier for all of us who would not be caught going in it to boycott it. And we have our cake (the less expensive things we might pick up in a dollar store) and eat it, too.
This new store - if boycotted by the neighbors - does not have enough through traffic to be sustained, especially with the shopping center right down the street. A little Mom and Pop is across the street that has been there for 40 plus years.
As I said, infuriating.

 

[Carl]

If it was all free instead of a dollar they would love it.

[Mr Mannn]

The signs were all made by one person, not by the community. This was one person who objected, was ignored by his neighbors and thought he was clever. Now the DUmmy is making himself out to be a community leader.

[Mugsaway]

They're worried about mom and pop stores going out of business but support $15 minimum wage.  Got it...

[98ZJUSMC]

They're worried about mom and pop stores going out of business but support $15 minimum wage.  Got it...

They'll never understand. Completely incapable of it.

[SVPete]

  The NIMBYs lost, a good thing. Within 6 months half of them will have slinked in and bought something; within a year they'll be bragging about the "good buys" they had found there. The rest will be whining about the trashy riff-raff coming into THEIR neighborhood, drawn by that store. As to the location .....

..... I wonder if Ms Mira is very familiar with Google and Google maps. Using a very moderate amount of Google-Fu I found where her zip code is, the addresses of the Family Dollar  stores in that zip code, and found those not listed as being in shopping centers on Google Maps satellite view. Here are the 5 locations Family Dollar lists for that zip code and in what they are located:

West Salem Shopping Center
South Park Shopping Center
3501 S. Main St. - shopping plaza
2201 W. Clemmonsville Rd. - shopping plaza
6223 Old U.S. 52 - shopping plaza

The latter 3 are the ones I had to locate on Google Maps satellite view. I'm not bragging, as anyone interested in fact-checking Ms Mira's implying that the new store was in a residential neighborhood could have done the same. My point is that all 5 Family Dollar stores in her zip code are in shopping centers/plazas. Even if the store she's talking about isn't on the map yet, Family Dollar locates its stores in shopping plazas, not as stand-alones in residential neighborhoods.

It shows how credulous DU-folk are that none of them thought to fact-check her .

As for the sour-graping about Family Dollar being messy, with unhelpful employees, that comes down to the staff and manglement of the individual store, not corporate policy. The few times I've visited the store of a competitor, Big Lots! (~$5.2B in 2015), the store was quite neat and the people were helpful. Family Dollar won't survive with messy stores and unhelpful people, and they know it. I think there is a good chance the messy, etc., store was fictional. If it's true, well, we avoid KMart and Sears stores for those reasons, and look how well they're doing (= dying).

[franksolich]

Ta-da-tee-dum-dee-dum.

Ta-da-tee-dum-dee-dum.....

comment 3158, minus the stuff about Junior Peanuts with an old 'un:
http://conservativecave.com/index.php?topic=81827.3150

[67 Rover]

The dollar store should build a larger solid fence or a chain link with Aluminum slats on their side of the property to block the childish protest signs. 

[BlueStateSaint]

The dollar store should build a larger solid fence or a chain link with Aluminum slats on their side of the property to block the childish protest signs.

Put triple-strand concertina wire on it . . . and electrify it . . .

[jukin]

I put the OP through The Lying DUchebag translator and it spit out this:

"Dollar General legally built a store that a huge majority of the neighborhood wanted. 3-5 scandalous miscreants vandalized nearby fence thinking they were a majority."

[SVPete]

I put the OP through The Lying DUchebag translator and it spit out this:

"Dollar General legally built a store that a huge majority of the neighborhood wanted. 3-5 scandalous miscreants vandalized nearby fence thinking they were a majority."

Obviously a well calibrated and very precise machine!

[Karin]

"Why would Family Dollar build a store in the middle of a neighborhood that asked it not to?
That’s what a 16 Billion Dollar corporate Bully does!”

As you can see it is a neighborhood full of artists.

Is she honestly suggesting that sign is "art?"

That thread just reeks of snobbery.  I love the Dollar General I go to, and the people there love me back. 

Response to Mira (Original post)

Sun Apr 17, 2016, 05:50 PM

AngryAmish (23,952 posts)

42. And Dollar stores attract the poors. Can't have that.
 
The Poors are not Artistic.

[Tess Anderson]

I think it's this one, Pete:

http://usplaces.com/Variety%20Stores/winston-salem-nc/family-dollar.6

Mira is a huge pain in the ass:

http://www.journalnow.com/opinion/letters_to_the_editor/the-readers-forum-saturday-letters/article_8a4bda20-cea7-11e4-8f00-470c9d0c2095.html

second post from the top

https://www.change.org/p/family-dollar-stores-no-family-dollar-store-in-historic-washington-park-winston-salem-nc

very litigious, that one

[SVPete]

I think it's this one, Pete:

http://usplaces.com/Variety%20Stores/winston-salem-nc/family-dollar.6

Ah, so there's a U-Haul Across Broad St. from it, a restaurant and barbershop diagonally across from it, and another restaurant across W. Acadia Ave. from it. IOW, retail/service businesses on all four corners. Not residential like one DU-member assumed, nothing fancy/historic like "Mira" suggested, just a business of which she and a few snobby friends disapprove.

[franksolich]

Ah, so there's a U-Haul Across Broad St. from it, a restaurant and barbershop diagonally across from it, and another restaurant across W. Acadia Ave. from it. IOW, retail/service businesses on all four corners. Not residential like one DU-member assumed, nothing fancy/historic like "Mira" suggested, just a business of which she and a few snobby friends disapprove.

You know, this is one of the reasons I'm so very happy I'm on you guys' side, and not the other side.

With all that you guys find out about the other side--and with, oh, such ease.....

[dutch508]

You know, this is one of the reasons I'm so very happy I'm on you guys' side, and not the other side.

With all that you guys find out about the other side--and with, oh, such ease.....

nobody is safe, Frank.

 

[BattleHymn]

If that's a historic neighborhood, I'll touch stevenumbers' pee-pee.  Historic districts that register and set up conservation bylaws do not have to worry about these problems.  Good luck getting that 'hood registered as a historic district, DUmmie.



The best part is that if enough of the surrounding DUmmies would have done what the former florist's sign said (BUY LOCAL), they wouldn't be looking at a FD in their neighborhood. 

[dixierose]

You know, this is one of the reasons I'm so very happy I'm on you guys' side, and not the other side.

With all that you guys find out about the other side--and with, oh, such ease.....

They make it easy. DUmmies talk about some of the most personal stuff at DU. I don't understand why they feel the need to share so much.

[GOBUCKS]

Why do DUmmies always hate any retailer where they can afford to shop?

I hope the other shitty little shops in the neighborhood get turned into a Dollar Tree and a Dollar Store to give Family Dollar some competition.

Then maybe the next few blocks can be razed to make room for a WalMart.

[SVPete]

You know, this is one of the reasons I'm so very happy I'm on you guys' side, and not the other side.

With all that you guys find out about the other side--and with, oh, such ease.....

It's hats-off to Tess on this. Her link had a Google map embedded, and I used satellite view to see what is around the Family Dollar store. "Mira" was a bit less disingenuous in her Letter to the Editor (that Tess linked), and spoke of the surrounding businesses. Her objection to the Family Dollar store is not that it's a business in a historic/residential area, but that it's a Big-Corporation bogeyman.

Her and her friends' effort was to take away some of the property rights from the owner of the property (probably Family Dollar, since a reasonably modern existing building got torn down  and a new was one built) by excluding businesses that are not local- and family-owned. And do so by arbitrary bureaucratic process means rather than actual ordinances or zoning regs (whether those could ever be constitutional is another question, about which she and her friends couldn't care less).

[SVPete]

Why do DUmmies always hate any retailer where they can afford to shop?

I hope the other shitty little shops in the neighborhood get turned into a Dollar Tree and a Dollar Store to give Family Dollar some competition.

Then maybe the next few blocks can be razed to make room for a WalMart.

It's all about the Big Corporation bogeyman for them. Had their neighbors Bill Smith-Brown and Sally Jones-Black managed to build the identical store to sell the same merchandise, etc., there would not have been this tempest in a teapot.

This DU-post was a, "Commiserate with me, for we fought and lost," Big Corporation bogeyman bash session. And Mira getting some DU-Cred.

[SVPete]

...
The best part is that if enough of the surrounding DUmmies would have done what the former florist's sign said (BUY LOCAL), they wouldn't be looking at a FD in their neighborhood.

Bingo, twice over! H-5 earned and issued. I wonder how many of those Buy Local advocates have put in many shopping cart miles at large-corporation supermarkets, department stores, discount stores, etc..

  time ... I have family who live in a NE KS small town. They occasionally drive a couple of hours to a Walmart ... and among the throngs they've seen Buy Local advocate store owners from their home town buying stock for their stores (because Walmart prices are better than they can get from distributors).

[Karin]

Tess knows everything.  I'm looking over my shoulder as we speak.

MYRA GROZINGER, Winston-Salem


A simple message


My former neighbor wrote the letter “No problem” (March 17). He says that for convenience’s sake he sees no problem with a Family Dollar store moving into our Washington Park neighborhood. I want to remind him that quite a bit closer to his house is the one in Parkway Plaza.


For others reading this, let me suggest a drive through Washington Park. They will notice a sea of yard signs in front of our beloved and historic homes. They spell out how collectively we residents are opposing a Family Dollar store on the corner of Acadia Avenue and Broad Street. I also have a sign, since I only moved within a few blocks of the letter writer. Our signs and appeals to the Winston-Salem City Council are all the recourse we have right now, though we pledge to each other to never darken its entrance should the store happen.


Money does talk. I hope Family Dollar will carefully consider our simple message: “If you build it, we won’t come.” The letter writer and maybe a few others as customers will not be enough to make this a profitable store in such a climate. There is not enough outside traffic in our neighborhood to rely on the financial kindness of strangers.

What a bitch.

[hillneck]

“If you build it, we won’t come.” The letter writer and maybe a few others as customers will not be enough to make this a profitable store in such a climate. There is not enough outside traffic in our neighborhood to rely on the financial kindness of strangers.

Myra, here's another reason why you're a resident of Skin's Island.  Do you think that Family Dollar just randomly selected that spot?  No, they more than likely did a number of market research's to make sure that area could support a profitable store.  I'm sure all your neighbors have already been there.

[Carl]

So they are polluting the actual historic area with a bunch of graffiti.