[Y]ou may be able to go into a Dollar General and buy a lot of stuff for less than elsewhere, but what if you want to buy the actual store?
In Johnson, the going price is $1.6 million for the store that opened last year.
When the Dollar General discount store opened in Johnson, some residents were surprised; they weren’t aware that such a project was in development. Some people might now be surprised to see that the Route 15 property is already for sale.
According to Johnson town administrator Brian Story, a Selectboard member tipped off other town officials to a real estate listing on LoopNet, an online listing site for commercial properties.
There, the property is listed for $1.65 million as an investment opportunity, touting, “The parcel has excellent visibility and with direct access on VT-15 and has strong traffic counts.”
But don’t expect Dollar General to go away, said Yves Bradley, a broker with Pomerleau Real Estate, the agent listed in conjunction with the parcel.
Bradley said the Dollar General is for sale as a turnkey operation for someone, other than the developer, to run — not as a franchise opportunity, as one of the rumors had it.
Bradley said developers will often build a property and then flip it “for a slightly lesser return on investment, which still looks good to an investor.” He pointed to a property in South Burlington that houses Trader Joe’s and Pier 1 Imports that has flipped a couple of times in the past few years.
“It’s kind of normal, nothing nefarious or anything like that,” he said. “It’s just, you know, developers from out of state flipping properties to make money.”
Dearborn Land Investment had the Dollar General built on Route 15 north of Johnson village last year after being denied an Act 250 permit and then skirting the Vermont land use law by developing a 0.98-acre parcel.
In towns without zoning, like Johnson, development of any land larger than one acre triggers Act 250. Stay under that, and developers don’t have to go through that state land-use permitting process.