Construction crews were working under drizzly skies Friday, Nov. 3, 2023, at the corner of Frontage Road and Highway 82, across from Coleman Oil, the location of the new Dollar General that is slated to open in the spring.

WALLOWA, Ore. — A new player will be joining the Wallowa business community in the spring when Dollar General sets up shop.

“Dollar General sells quality, name-brand and private brand merchandise such as foods, health and beauty products, home cleaning supplies, housewares, stationery, seasonal items and basic clothing,” according to a statement Nov. 2 from Emma Hall, public relations coordinator for the company.

Hall said plans call for opening the store in the spring.

Franz Goebel, planning director for Wallowa County, said Thursday that Dollar General applied for a building permit March 20. The store is just outside the Wallowa city limits, but is in Wallowa’s urban growth boundary, which means the city’s zoning codes are applicable.

Mayor Gary Hulse said that work started on the store in late October. He said that since the site is outside the city limits but in the UGB, city water and sewer services aren’t available and Dollar General would be required to pay to connect to water and sewer, if it chose to.

“They said it would be cheaper to drill a well and put in a septic system,” Hulse said.

In the meantime, some local residents have become alarmed at the presence of a chain store — something rare in Wallowa County — setting up shop.

Hulse said he’s heard a mix of support and opposition to Dollar General being in Wallowa.

“I haven’t heard anything other than a few people are supportive of it,” he said. “It’s about a 50-50 thing.”

But Teresa Smergut and other local residents are opposed to the new store. She said she’s talked to local merchants who don’t seem to care and also to some in Elgin, where the nearest Dollar General is, who initially were concerned about it setting up shop but found it not to be a great threat.

“We’re trying to do as much research as possible before we take a stand,” Smergut said.

She said the main thing is that it came as such a surprise.

“We’ve been kind of blindsided here,” she said. “From the few people we’ve talked to, most everybody’s against it.”

Smergut said she believes that rather than building at a new site, Dollar General should have made use of one of the vacant storefronts downtown.

“If they’re going to do something like that, it should’ve been downtown,” she said.

Overall, she said, Dollare General doesn’t seem to fit with local culture.

“It doesn’t fit with the culture of the county,” she said. “It just doesn’t seem like it fits in the county.”

In a letter to the editor to the Wallowa County Chieftain newspaper, Smergut urged others who oppose Dollar General’s presence to write to the company’s corporate headquarters to say so. But with construction well underway, that may be too late, she said.

Once known for selling everything for $1 or less, that was a business model that eventually became unsustainable. The first Dollar General store opened in Springfield, Ky., in 1955 and now has more than 19,000 stores in 47 states.

Hall said Dollar General aims to serve the communities in which it’s located.

“Dollar General is deeply involved in the communities it serves and is an ardent supporter of literacy and education through the Dollar General Literacy Foundation, which awards grants each year to nonprofit organizations, schools and libraries within a 15-mile radius of a Dollar General store or distribution center to support adult, family, summer and youth literacy programs,” she said.

“Since its inception in 1993, the DGLF has awarded more than $238 million in grants to nonprofit organizations, helping more than 19.6 million individuals take their first steps toward literacy or continued education,” she said.