A Family Dollar Dollar Tree combo store is being planned for just south of the entrance of Cacapon State Park ten miles south of Berkeley Springs, West Virginia – and almost directly across the road from the Dollar General on Oakland Road.
The developer and owner, Piedmont Companies of Lincolnton, North Carolina, submitted plans for the land, previously owned by Coolfont Resort and Country Inn owner Larry Omps, to the Morgan County Planning Commission on March 6, 2023.
The planning commission will hold a public hearing on the proposal after the developer meets all of the planning commission requirements.
Morgan County Commissioner planner Alex Moore wrote to the engineering company affiliated with the project on March 9, 2023 asking for 25 items of additional information “including Department of Highway entrance permit approval.”
After Moore receives the requisite information, the Planning Commission will hold a public hearing to discuss the proposal.
The site plans show that there is no turn lane from U.S. 522 into the proposed site’s parking lot – which has 43 planned parking spots.
Dollar Tree bought Family Dollar in 2014. There are more than 19,000 Dollar General stores in the United States, more than 8,000 Family Dollar stores, more than 8,000 Dollar Tree stores and more than 800 Family Dollar Dollar Tree combo stores.
“We are writing a bold new chapter for our business – and for towns all across America,” Family Dollar says on its website. “We’ve brought Family Dollar and Dollar Tree together under one roof, starting in small, rural towns across the country that had limited retail options. Our customers love the concept and we are expanding past just small towns. We ended fiscal 2022 with approximately 810 Combo stores opened and plan to add hundreds more in the coming years.”
“We have a lease, we have a bank commitment, we have everything lined up,” Piedmont’s Larry Bearden told Morgan County USA. “We want to get everything approved properly and done properly. We’d like to have the store open by fall. But it all depends. It takes us about 120 days from the start of construction until we are open. A lot of that can depend on the weather.”
Is there a reason you put the store just a couple hundred yards away from the Dollar General on Oakland Road?
“Their customer is our customer,” Bearden said. “You may have a McDonald’s across from another fast food outlet like a Burger King right across the street. It’s just a different type of product mix. And people shop both.”
Have you gotten approval from the Department of Highways?
“We have been talking with them,” Bearden said.
Is there going to be a turn lane on 522?
“I’m not certain of that, I can’t answer that,” Bearden said.
In 2015, many residents of the south Morgan County community opposed the Dollar General store that eventually went in at the corner of Oakland Road and US 522. The dispute became acrimonious, with then County Commissioner Bob Ford calling for the ouster of Jerry Berman from the Economic Development Authority Board for writing a song against the Dollar General and singing it with a group of fellow singers before a Morgan County Planning Commission meeting at the county courthouse in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia.
The song played on a news report by WHAG — NBC 25 Hagerstown, Maryland.
“Mr. Berman, as well as any other members of the EDA that may have participated in protesting the company at the last Planning Commission meeting, should resign,” Ford said at a Morgan County Commission meeting at the time.
“Since that meeting, I have had several citizens in the county ask me who is this Berman fellow that wrote and lead the singing of some song protesting Dollar General,” Ford said. “I said — you mean Jerry Berman — he is on the EDA. The next thing they ask me is — what the hell are you running down there?”