Community leaders howled in 2022 when they discovered a Dollar General store was coming into the heart of Waverly, the north Baltimore neighborhood they’d been working hard to uplift by encouraging small, locally owned businesses.

So angry was Councilwoman Odette Ramos at the developer, Mark Renbaum, who’d bought the building and leased it to the company without engaging with the community, that she said she planned tell people not to shop there.

Chain stores selling cheap merchandise – Family Dollar as well as Dollar General – were springing up in close proximity to each other up and down the York Road/Greenmount Avenue corridor.

Across town in West Baltimore, communities were seeing the same phenomenon.

First there was the Family Dollar on West Belvedere Avenue. Then another popped up on Park Heights Avenue, with a Dollar General practically next door. Then another sprouted at the corner of Liberty Heights Avenue and Garrison Boulevard.

“It’s been constant trash outside, the aisles inside not safe, not clean, outdated food, drainage problems, loitering, crime, rats, low-paid employees being treated poorly and just no responsiveness to the community from the companies,” explained Council Vice President Sharon Green Middleton.

“People just feel like they are being overwhelmed by these places,” she said, in an interview with The Brew.

This week Middleton and Ramos appeared before a City Council committee to present a bill – and plenty of reasons – for controlling their spread.

“This concentration not only reduces consumer choices, but also impacts the economic landscape, making it difficult for independent grocers and specialty shops, to succeed,” Middleton told the Land Use and Transportation Committee.

“The clustering of dollar stores may contribute to food deserts, limiting access to fresh products and healthy food which can worsen health disparities,” she added.

Scaled-Back Provisions

Under City Council bill 25-0040, “small box” retail establishments proposed for any commercial zone would have to get “conditional use” approval from the Zoning Board, providing some leverage for residents.

“It means, at least, the community will be involved in the conversation because the applicant has to go before the board to get approval,” Ramos said.

The bill also states that two “small box” retail stores can’t be located less than ½ mile apart.

Amendments approved by the committee reflected objections from the city law department and Scott administration.

One amendment scaled back the original definition of a “small box” store, eliminating language that had specifically targeted “corporate dollar stores,” described as “part of a chain with 10 or more locations in Baltimore City doing business under the same name.”

Viewed by city lawyers as potentially discriminatory, the language was stricken, leaving the definition as a store “having a floor area of 5,000 to 12,000 square feet” that “offers for sale assorted inexpensive small goods in small units.”

“These were necessary compromises to at least get something started”  – Council VP Sharon Green Middleton.

Other amendments both clarified that grocery stores would not be covered by the bill and eliminated a provision that would have meant that another store could not take the place a closed small-box store if it was closed for longer than 30 days. A new conditional use approval would have to be obtained.

“The law department says, ‘No, you can’t do that – every other use that has a conditional use has a two-year wait, so that another store can go right in,’” Ramos explained. “We took that out so it’s still going to be a two-year wait.”

Middleton said these were necessary compromises to “at least get something started.”

“We have to be careful that we’re being kind to all businesses,” she said. “We don’t want to be sued by a business over something small.”

In a brief statement, Ty’lor Schnella said the Scott administration “supports the bill with amendments” and thanked the sponsors for meeting with the mayor’s staff “to parse out any concerns.”

Will Enforcement Work?

Councilwoman Phylicia Porter, meanwhile, had the opposite concern.

She questioned whether the bill was strong enough to tackle the kind of problems she encountered with dollar stores in her southwest 10th District.

Responding, Ramos noted that the companies seeking a conditional use for a small box store could be required to enter into MOU agreements with the communities that could then be revoked by the Zoning Board if violated.

“There was not a lot of backbone to that a long time ago. But the board has been pretty clear that we want to establish these things and we will hold companies accountable,” Ramos told her.

Porter appeared skeptical.

“My concern is that some of those issues go on for two years, three years, in some instances up to the five years, and the community is exhausted,” she said. “I’m not confident that we can simply rely on the makeup of the board to ensure that the conditional use is enforced or not.”

“We should be utilizing levers in our toolbox,” she continued, “such as laws to ensure that, regardless of the board makeup is, we are still consistently maintaining the quality of life for those areas.”

“Not a good neighbor”

Echoing Porter’s sentiment, speakers from the community praised the bill, but implored the Council to do more to curb the influx of dollar stores.

“I need you to look at this – and not just this one bill. We need help, like a moratorium, a pause, a dispersal restriction,”said Cheron Jones, grants administrator for Healthy Neighborhoods, Inc.

“You have organizers and coordinators like myself in the community putting their finger on the pulse coming to say to you that the dollar store is detrimental – it’s the direct opposite of what we’re trying to do,”  she said, noting that she was also representing the 14-member Liberty Coalition of Neighborhoods that includes Ashburton, Grove Park, Garwyn Oaks and West Arlington.

Dollar stores, she said, undermine community efforts to “increase property values and bring people into the city,” weakening the city’s goals under its Middle Neighborhoods strategy.

“We need help, like a moratorium, a pause, a dispersal restriction” on dollar stores  – Cheron Jones, Healthy Neighborhoods, Inc.

Getting the Dollar General that opened three years ago in Waverly to be a good neighbor was a futile exercise, Diana Emerson, executive director of Waverly Main Street, told the committee.

The immediate community outcry “was unanswered by the property owner,” she said, and when the store was asked to sign an MOU pledging responsible behavior, “they declined.”

“That dollar store showed us how they truly felt about our community,” Emerson continued. “They allowed continuous pile-up of trash in both the rear and the front of their building.”

“They had very, very lax rules as it relates to shoplifting and theft, which meant our local businesses had to increase their own security presence to protect their businesses,” she went on. “This is not a good neighbor.”

Today the store is not a neighbor of any kind – it shut down last April.

On Thursday, workers were seen hauling items from the vacant interior of 3313 Greenmount Avenue and pitching them into a junk truck.

Why did Tennessee-based Dollar General pull the plug after just three years?

A spokesman said the company “remained committed to its 15 additional locations in the city” and pointed The Brew to its store optimization review.

The closing of nearly 100 Dollar General stores this year across the country, the review said, was “based on an evaluation of individual store performance, expected future performance and operating conditions, among other factors.”

Meanwhile, mainstays in Baltimore’s Waverly neighborhood like Herman’s Discount and Normal’s Books & Records – as well as newcomers like Red Emma’s Bookstore Coffeehouse – remain open and continue to serve customers.

As for Bill 25-0040, it will be considered for preliminary approval at a future meeting of the full Council.