EAST MILLINOCKET, Maine — Construction workers are putting the finishing touches on a 8,320-square-foot Family Dollar store on Main Street that will likely open at the end of November, officials said Wednesday.
“We’re very excited to open the store for the neighborhood, and we look forward to being part of the community for years to come,” said Cliff Cermak, a corporate affairs specialist for the discount retailer.
Construction workers were finishing paving the parking lot of the $700,000 facility on Wednesday, said Clint Linscott, a town selectman and who owns the land on which the store is being built.
“It’s very neat, larger than I expected,” Linscott said Wednesday. “Everything is finished. It looks like they are close to [installing] shelving.”
The facility will employ six to eight workers. A Family Dollar store has been in Lincoln on West Broadway for almost 10 years. According to its website, familydollar.com, the chain includes more than 8,000 stores from Maine to California. The chain celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2009.
Linscott’s workers finished gutting the site at 117 Main St. of a mall-sized building that housed the Hamlet restaurant and other retail establishments in March. In late February, the auto mechanic and body repairman, who owns Linscott’s Auto Body shop at 68 Main St., said that the layoffs and shutdown at the new Great Northern Paper Co. LLC mill forced him to raze the building.
The Hamlet had been a motel from the 1960s to 1990s that had more recently been the site of several retail outlets, including a bookstore, greenhouse outlet, photography studio, bar and restaurant.
Benchmark Construction of Westbrook is building the new store.