Will a dollar general ruin a rural crossroads?

Anne Hartley’s brick house in Ebony, Virginia, overlooks windswept fields, a Methodist church, a general store and the intersection of two country roads, a rural setting reminiscent of an Edward Hopper painting or a faded postcard from the South.

Now this scene is threatened, Ms. Hartley said, by a plan to build what every small American town seems to have: a Dollar General.

Ms Hartley, a descendant of one of Ebony’s founding families, says the discount store – which would be built next to her home – will cause traffic problems in the area, with people drawn to the brand’s signature yellow sign and aisles filled with cheap food and household items.

In addition to the store itself, Ms. Hartley and many others associated with Ebony believe it will open the door to additional development that will spoil the character of their small, rural community of about 230 people. The name of their website and the rallying cry for their campaign against the Dollar General is “Keep Ebony Country”.

“We don’t want over-commercialization to destroy the integrity of the community,” Ms Hartley said.

Jerry Jones also has strong feelings about Dollar General. He too grew up in Ebony and was Mrs. Hartley’s classmate at the local public school for many years. He then ran grocery stores in southern Virginia and later owned a gas station in Ebony that sold fresh-baked cookies and fried bullshit burgers.

Mr. Jones, now largely retired, owns the land where the Dollar General was to be built. He said the store would provide residents of the county with a convenient and affordable place to shop while also generating much-needed tax revenue.

“You still have to have that balance between the people with nicer things and the people who live paycheck to paycheck,” Mr Jones said. “For me, Dollar General fits right in.”

The dispute in Ebony, which has been going on for more than three years, is about planning and zoning, but it also touches on a deeper issue simmering in many parts of rural America, whether the disputes are over cell phone towers or snowmobile trails. . What does ‘land’ mean to different people in a small community?

Dollar General wins most places. In the United States, the company has made an aggressive effort to penetrate thousands of remote or impoverished communities with stores that, along with low prices, have been criticized for unhealthy food offerings and low-paid workers.

An increasing number of these proposed dollar stores are leading to litigation, creating opponents in small towns and struggling cities. The retailer has been attacked by a think tank for its negative effects on small businesses and by the Biden administration for the unkempt state of its stores.

Still, a vast majority of the proposed dollar stores are being built. One in three stores to open in the United States by 2022 was a dollar store.

Those opposed to the proposed Dollar General in Ebony are trying to counter the trend.

About 90 miles south of Richmond, Ebony sits on the edge of Lake Gaston and is a second home haven that serves as a major tax base. Ebony is part of Brunswick County, once a hub of tobacco farming, where the median household income is about $49,600, well below the national median of $80,600. More than half of the county’s population is black.

The five-member Brunswick County Board of Supervisors approved a zoning change that allowed the store to be built 3 to 2.

The supervisors who voted to approve the store declined to comment, citing a lawsuit filed by Ms. Hartley and other opponents challenging their decision.

In a statement, Dollar General said it offered fresh produce in thousands of stores and offered a “safe work environment” and “competitive wages.”

“We regularly hear from communities, especially in rural areas, asking us to bring a Dollar General to their hometown,” the company added. “We understand that a Dollar General would be welcomed by many Ebony residents and hope to serve that community.”

Many of the store’s detractors are driven by their appreciation of Ebony’s past and what they hope can be preserved. And some relative newcomers to the community are sympathetic to their argument. Mohamed Abouemara moved to Southern Virginia from New York to operate convenience stores and has been running the Ebony General Store for nine years.

He said his shop, where locals can meet and buy hot food, plays an important role in a rural community.

A dollar store, he said, would significantly hurt his business. “Jerry is a friend of mine,” Mr. Abouemara said of Mr. Jones. “I’m not mad at him. But if he still owned his shop, he wouldn’t let a Dollar General come here.

A sense of place.

Mrs. Hartley keeps meticulous records of family and Ebony history. Her family has owned land in the area for generations, and her great-grandfather named the community after a black horse named Ebony in the late 1800s.

The family also ran a convenience store. When Mrs. Hartley was growing up in Ebony in the 1960s, her father owned a business that included a butcher shop, barber shop, and mill in the back. Mrs. Hartley helped her parents in the shop when she was a child, and she remembers her father working long hours, from morning to night. “It was the center of our family life,” she said of small-town retailing.

Ms. Hartley attended the University of North Carolina, where she majored in mathematics and later worked as a computer programmer, a rare position for a woman in the 1970s and 1980s and a point of pride for her.

She now owns her family’s home in Ebony, where family photos spanning many generations cover the walls and side tables.

Mrs. Hartley’s primary residence is in Chapel Hill, NC, about 90 miles south, but she visits the Ebony home regularly.

Ms Hartley says she intends to protect a rural crossroads from a box office for the good of a community and the local economy, which aims to boost tourism

Her lawsuit argues that the county violated its own comprehensive plan that highlights the importance of the area’s scenic landscapes. The county has said in court documents that the plan is only intended to provide guidance for development.

Dozens of local residents and those with Ebony roots have mobilized against the development as part of the Ebony Preservation Group. They have collected donations to support their legal battles and lobbied the state to have the community considered part of the National Register of Historic Places.

Elizabeth Nash Horne, whose parents and grandparents are buried in a graveyard next to the proposed store, said a chain of stores in Ebony “just wasn’t needed”. There are already three existing dollar stores just a few miles from Ebony.

Some say they recognize the county needs tax revenue. “But are we going to sell our souls for something that comes along?” said Bobby Conner, who grew up in Ebony and now works on tourism initiatives for Brunswick County.

The main route into Ebony from the Interstate is Route 903, a two-lane highway lined with real estate billboards that eventually opens into farm fields and pine forests.

Route 903 enters an intersection in Ebony where there’s a gas station on one side of the road and the Ebony General Store on the other, a dim maze of canned vegetables and soda bottles where the smell of fried catfish mingles with steaming hot dogs .

Sid Cutts, a homebuilder who has developed properties on Lake Gaston, said Ebony and other historic-looking intersections were becoming increasingly rare in the South.

“I use the term country elegance,” Mr. Cutts said when describing Ebony.

Mr Cutts said his clients from larger cities who built lakeside homes were important to the community because they spend money on local businesses. But they’re looking for the homey charm they can find at the long-running Ebony General Store, he said, not another Dollar General.

“I’m pure country.”

Mr. Jones says he too has Ebony’s best interests at heart in bringing a Dollar General to the community.

Mr. Jones’s father and grandfather bought land in Ebony in the 1950s and many members of his family still live in Ebony. Several of them are neighbors of Mrs. Hartley’s.

Mr. Jones didn’t go to college, but he worked his way up through A.&P. and ran several stores in Virginia.

In the 1990s, Mr. Jones built a gas station and convenience store across from the Ebony General Store.

He sold his shop in 2005 and now lives in a nearby town, although he regularly works land in Ebony. Mr Jones said he did not understand how placing a third company at a busy intersection would destroy Ebony’s rural character.

“Which character do they really want to save?” he said. “I am still going to be there on my tractor. None of that will change one iota. I just don’t have to drive that far for a cold drink or a Pop-Tart.”

Mr. Jones’ aunt, Betty Lett, lives across the street from where the store was to be built. She thinks a dollar store would bring new excitement to Ebony.

“I’m pure country,” said Mrs. Lett one afternoon as she sat across from Mr. Jones in her living room. An antique doll hung from the ceiling on a swing.

Mr Jones brushed off criticism from dollar stores – that their aisles and dumpsters outside are a mess and their employees are underpaid. He pointed out that the minimum hourly wage in Virginia is $12.

“I never even made $10 an hour,” says Ms. Lett, who retired in 2007 after four decades of factory and distribution center work. “I have to get back to work,” she joked.

Shaunton Taylor, who stopped for gas at the Ebony General Store one afternoon, said she would still shop there even if a dollar store came along.

Mrs. Taylor lives in a house on a family farm three miles from the site of the proposed Dollar General. The homestead was first inhabited by her great-grandparents, who were farmers.

“I’m open to new things, especially in the countryside,” says Ms Taylor, who works in a nursing home and also writes poetry. “Everything that is new, you have to accept.”

This year, Ms. Hartley asked the Virginia Supreme Court to hear the case, arguing that the issue of how a county interprets its comprehensive plan “would affect all Virginians for years to come.” She is convinced that her group will prevail in the end.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Hartley contacted Mr. Jones with an offer: She told him that a supporter of her group would match what the developer of the Dollar General store would pay Mr. Jones for the property – about $88,000, sir. Jones said.

But Mr. Jones refused. His idea and the conservation group’s idea for what should happen to the land, he said, “just don’t match.”