Workers are preparing the former Circuit City building on South Quintard Avenue to house a Dollar General store. (Photo: Bill Wilson/The Anniston Star)
DG Partners LLC, a developer that builds for the Dollar General retail chain bought the former location of Circuit City in a deal that closed this week.
Anniston City Planner Toby Bennington said today that a Dollar General Store would occupy one space in the former electronics store, with the other half being developed for another tenant.
Bennington did not know when the store would open, or who might become the tenant in the other space. Workers were at the site today, apparently beginning work on renovations.
The store will be the low-price retailer’s 14th in Calhoun County. Dollar General announced in January it would open 625 stores around the country this year. There are more than 8,800 Dollar General Stores nationwide, according to information on the company’s website.
Attempts to reach a spokesman for the company Friday were unsuccessful.
Meanwhile, another deal may be in the works nearby. Bennington said the owners of the former Hollywood Video store told him Thursday they were wrapping up a deal to locate a business in the former video rental shop. Bennington said he was not at liberty to disclose the identity of the potential business.
The Hollywood Video property is owned by Anniston South Quintard LLC. The 2010 tax bill for the property was mailed to the Decatur, Ga., address of development firm Gryboski & Howe. Attempts to reach the developers Friday were unsuccessful.
The Ezell Park property was initially a sales-tax boon for the city, after voters approved the sale of the park by a razor-thin margin of three votes in a 1994 referendum. It had been home to youth baseball and football games. In 1997, a deal was announced to build several businesses there.
An Office Max store and a Ruby Tuesday restaurant remain in business on the site of the former park. In recent years, however, some of the retailers fell on hard times. Hollywood Video and Circuit City both announced they were closing in 2008. A Big Apple Bagels location shut down in 2001, eventually to be replaced by the locally owned Sam Stewart Formal Wear shop. That business moved out in recent years, heading up Wilmer Avenue to downtown. Annell Petroff set up her salon and day spa there about a year ago.
“We’re excited about it,” Petroff said of the planned Dollar General store. She said despite the empty storefronts, the location is a good one.
“This is such an artery here,” she said of the block, at the intersection of South Quintard Avenue and Greenbrier-Dear Road.
Bennington said he thinks traffic will remain steady there despite the recent opening of a portion of Veterans Memorial Parkway, which allows north-south traffic to avoid South Quintard and downtown Anniston. The interest from Dollar General and other retailers is evidence of that, he said.
“Quintard still is and will be a destination,” he said. “That traffic is going to continue to be there.”
Contact Metro Editor Ben Cunningham at 256-235-3542.
