When residents in part of south Cobb’s Austell area found out that the new building going up along Six Flags Drive was slated to be a discount retail chain store, they went into action.
E-mails flew, county officials were contacted, meetings were convened and a community was engaged.
“It was disappointing,” said Brittany Innes, 29, who has lived in the Chimney Hill subdivision, which is adjacent to the store site at the corner of Six Flags Drive and Factory Shoals Road, for two years. “This is an area of working-class minorities, yet you won’t bring in better businesses? You continue to bring in stores like Dollar General because we’re seen as underserved.”
Dollar General is working toward a fall grand opening, said company spokeswoman Tawn Earnest. The company operates more than 9,000 stores in 35 states. Existing shopping options in a neighborhood, demographics, traffic and growth patterns are used to evaluate whether a location is a good fit for a store, Earnest said.
"In the case of Austell, we believe we have a great match of what shoppers in the area are wanting and what Dollar General offers," she said.
Innes and her neighbors, also homeowners from neighborhoods surrounding the store site, would have preferred a major grocery store, higher-end retail, a bank or some county service come to the corner instead of the discount store that has a reputation of being located in poor neighborhoods, they said.
“I’ve seen how [discount companies] opened stores on other major thoroughfares in the county, and I’ve seen them close down,” said Ron Davis, 53, vice president of the Summerlin subdivision homeowners’ association, located about a quarter-mile from where the Dollar General will be.
Six Flags Drive is lined on both sides from I-20 to the Factory Shoals intersection with small strip shopping centers, containing beauty supply stores, takeout food outlets, cellular phone retailers and a rundown hotel. A number of multi-unit apartment complexes are also found in the area, which has had a reputation as a high-crime area. A dedicated police unit has worked in the area to reduce crime.
Austell's median household income is $38,933, according to 2000 census data. Median home value was $84,100. About 65 percent of the area's population over age 25 were high school graduates or higher, and just under 10 percent had received a bachelor's degree.
“Six Flags Drive does not have the best of reputations and hasn’t had the best of reputations for a long time,” said Rep. Alisha Morgan, who represents the area and has taken on a de facto leadership role among the residents. “As a result, I think the wishes of the community weren’t necessarily reflected by what has come up in terms of development.”
Although too late to stop the opening of this Dollar General store, the residents are working to shape the physical appearance of the development and require a return from the company in the form of community involvement, such as adopting the nearby elementary school. Through their work with the county, the residents have gotten the company to construct a store that will be four-sided brick, will include privacy fences for the adjacent neighborhoods and will not have a HVAC unit mounted on the roof.
Earnest said the company has received constructive and positive feedback from the community, and it is working with community leaders.
“We’ve noticed in the last five to 10 years that companies are more apt to do things to make them the best neighbors they can be,” said Rob Hosack, Cobb’s director of community development. “Companies realize that if the community they plan to go into is upset with them, they will not be customers.”
Dollar General began its permitting process with the county in November 2009. Because the company built on land already zoned commercial and was not changing the zoning, a public hearing was not required, and residents were late to find out about the development. In the future, any development coming into the area -- despite zoning requirements -- could require a public meeting, Hosack said.
Although the residents’ desires are for more upscale businesses, the market must exist for those developments, said County Commissioner Woody Thompson, whose district includes the area.
“I knew what the people were saying: They wanted a bank or a grocery store. Those things will come in time, but I told them we’ve got to change the demographics, not race, but per-capita income,” Thompson said. “[Some developers] think the dollar store is all the community can afford, and quite frankly maybe right now that is it.”
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