CHESAPEAKE
Dollar Tree will soon undertake a $110 million expansion to its headquarters in Greenbrier, adding 600 jobs and erecting the tallest tower in the city, Gov. Terry McAuliffe announced Wednesday.
The governor and city officials gathered at the corporate campus to unveil the company’s decision, hailing it as a “major economic development” announcement.
“This is a really big deal for us here in Virginia,” McAuliffe said. “We really went all in on this.”
The state is providing more than $9 million to encourage the expansion, with Chesapeake adding another $4.5 million in incentives.
The announcement came after a hard-fought battle with Virginia’s neighbor to the south.
Dollar Tree CEO Bob Sasser said North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory was competitive in trying to attract the company, which has a campus in Matthews, N.C.
“At the end of the day, the governor and city of Chesapeake really worked hard to give us the opportunity to stay here,” Sasser said Wednesday. “We’re excited to continue to call Chesapeake our corporate home.”
Dollar Tree is headquartered on 70 acres along Volvo Parkway. It moved there in 1997 and has expanded twice before.
This next expansion will add an urban “streetscape” with food, retail, public parking and possibly a hotel. A new 12-floor tower will be the tallest in the city – about a third as high as the Westin at Virginia Beach’s Town Center.
The City Council approved a rezoning application for a mixed-use development on the property back in 2013, part of why city officials said they felt so moved to retain the company’s operations there.
At the time, the high-density retail, commercial and residential development was meant to be similar to Town Center in the Beach.
“Clearly this was a project the city felt was important,” said Chesapeake’s economic development director, Steven Wright. “It was very tough competition, but the city really felt we had to be as aggressive as we possibly could.”
The talks with Dollar Tree have spanned several years, starting with the rezoning process, but were especially vigorous in recent months, Wright said. They stalled while Dollar Tree worked to acquire Family Dollar, a deal that went through last year.
Mayor Alan Krasnoff praised the company’s decision as proof that the city is “open for business.”
“For Chesapeake, today marks a very serious inflection,” Krasnoff said after accepting a giant check from the governor. “It means we’ve come of age, and the sky’s the limit.”
The mayor said he’s proud to house a “small, Fortune 500 company that sells really, really great socks,” pointing to his own as evidence.
The deliberations with the company were nerve-wracking, but “this is of course about bragging rights,” Krasnoff said.
The city will also need to promptly begin work on improvements to “make sure traffic flow in Greenbrier isn’t adversely affected,” City Manager Jim Baker said. Funds for that will come through the Greenbrier Tax Increment Financing district.
Baker said he expects the city to eventually “do better than break even” with its investments in the project.
Sasser said the expansion will be Dollar Tree’s biggest project to date. The chain operates more than 14,000 stores in the U.S. and Canada and plans to add 550 this year.
Dollar Tree did not announce a timeline for the construction but said it will take place over the next several years.
Katherine Hafner, 757-222-5208, katherine.hafner@pilotonline.com. Follow @khafner15 on Twitter.
