The town of Washburn could be welcoming a new retail business in the near future if the Dollar General company decides to move forward with a preliminary proposal.
The Tennessee-based discount chain has won approval from Washburn’s Planning Board for the conceptual design of the store, which would be located on a town-owned lot near downtown Washburn, said town code enforcement officer Adam Doughty.
“It’s still in the preliminary stages,” Doughty said. “The town is really looking forward to having a new business. It’s going to be a good thing if we can get this to work.”
Washburn’s Planning Board would still have to approve a final site design and proposal for the store, Doughty said. He added that the company is working on the final design, but has not submitted it.
The store could employ as many as 10 people and it would be located at the corner of Main Street and Gardner Creek Road, where currently the Aroostook Valley multi-use trail popular with ATV and snowmobile riders runs through a town-owned property.
Building the store there would require relocating the state-owned trail — which the Maine Legislature has voted to approve — as well as the town selling or leasing the lot to the company, Doughty said.
“They looked around town and that was the piece of property that was best suited for them,” he said about the location of the proposed store.
Angela Petkovic, spokesperson for Dollar General, said the company is currently in a “due diligence phase” for considering a store in Washburn and expects to make a decision by late spring of 2018. “We are reviewing the opportunity to add a new store in the area, but we have not committed to doing so just yet.”
Dollar General is the country’s largest discount chain, with some 14,000 stores in 44 states, including 14 in Maine.
