Dollar Generals are lifelines for many small Arkansas towns in food deserts, and Wrightsville is about to lose that lifeline.
Residents in Wrightsville are petitioning to prevent the closure of their Dollar General store, which was announced in May. The store is the only convenience or grocery store in the city.
Sammye Hicks, a Wrightsville resident who started the petition to save their Dollar General, said, “There’s no gas station, there’s no banks, no nothing, no commerce. And this is it. So we lose that, what do we do?”
Hicks has been circulating a petition that she intends to submit to Dollar General this Thursday, pleading for the company to keep the store open.
At a city council meeting tonight, Hicks and others expressed their concerns about Dollar General’s closure. City officials said they were also blindsided by the news and have attempted to contact Dollar General.
“We have reached out, we did not receive any responses. We’ve contacted individuals on the corporate level, and there has not been any response,” said Derrick Rainey, mayor of Wrightsville.
Locals say Wrightsville has faced a decline in recent years as younger generations move away.
“The kids grow up and they move away. They do move away, they find jobs in Little Rock and they stay in Little Rock,” said Allan Loring, former Wrightsville mayor and councilman.
When Dollar General opened its store in 2010, there were two mom-and-pop stores in Wrightsville, but residents say the cheaper prices at the chain forced them out of business.
The recent announcement that Dollar General’s store would close on July 14 felt like a slap in the face.
Residents say the town’s many elderly or poor residents who can’t drive won’t have anywhere to get groceries and other essentials within a roughly ten-mile radius.
“We used to call Dollar General the ‘Wrightsville mall’ because that’s the only thing we had,” said former mayor Mckinzie Riley. “This is a real, real poor area. In majority, we got a lot of citizens that don’t have transportation and so this is where they come. And so when we close this down, they got nowhere to go.”
“We need Dollar General. Wrightsville has supported Dollar General since Dollar General opened. We need Dollar General to support us,” said Dameter Riley, a Wrightsville resident.
Dollar General announced in March that it would close 96 stores after a 32 percent drop in profits last year. It selected stores for closure based on their performance and operating conditions, as determined in a review done late last year.
Though the store appears to do a good business, locals told KATV that theft has been a serious problem.
“Hire security,” Hicks said. “Pulaski County Sheriff’s Department patrols this area—there’s just so many ways that we could go [about] this.”
As Dollar General’s closure fast approaches, City Hall is trying to get Rock Region Metro to restore the city’s old bus route to help those without vehicles travel to Little Rock for essential goods.
The city is also trying to secure an economic development grant worth $1.5 million.
Dollar General provided the following statement to KATV regarding the closure of their Wrightsville location:
At Dollar General, we continually evaluate our stores and how we can best serve our customers. A decision has been made to close our location at 14515 Highway 365 South in Wrightsville by mid-July 2025 following an evaluation of the store’s operational effectiveness. Impacted employees will have the opportunity to transfer to nearby stores… We remain committed to serving our customers at our 45 additional locations within the county.
