Shinglehouse's DG Market

                                                                 

    As promised last month, we will now tour the newly built Dollar General Market in Shinglehouse. Being a proper supermarket, DG Market does indeed offer meats, produce and a wider variety of food products. They even expanded their HBA offerings to include cosmetics. From my observations, it appears that every department (except maybe homegoods) appears to of have their offerings expanded. 

Seeing a cart corral at a Dollar General is something I didn't expect.

The store opened without any exterior signage up, but did receive it later.

Produce offerings were a little barebones at first, but I assume that to be caused by just opening up.

Self Checkout

A look at the now former DG. They pretty much left everything behind.

The Now Former Shinglehouse Dollar General

 

    While Dollar General is everywhere nowadays, that wasn't always the case. This particular location we are about to look at is from the days when DG was a lot more selective about where they opened. Over time, it shoehorned some frozen food refrigerators into the store when DG expanded into that category. DG also replaced the exterior signs replacements and then finally did a full blown remodel in 2019. With the exception of socks and underwear, that mentioned remodel actually eliminated the clothing aisle this location had offered in favor of more frozen food product. This location would close in early 2024 in favor of a newly built DG Market nearby- which we'll take a look at next month. 

Always appreciated the overhang this location offered.

Frozen Foods was a later addition that was put into the store's front corner.

Old style of checkout

At the time these photos were taken, remodeling work was still underway hence the boxes and empty shelves

Meadville's Downtown Mall

With the Meadville Kmart now closed, all memories of the Meadville Mall have ceased to exist. This leaves just one mall in the area which is the focus of this post.

The Downtown Mall currently has Big Lots as an anchor while a Tops supermarket (former Bi-Lo) serves as a shadow anchor in the parking lot. The only other national tenants in the mall besides anchor Big Lots is a mall-based Dollar General and H&R Block. Everything else is locally owned and operated.

The only additional comment to be made on the mall is that Big Lots was a former Fishers Big Wheel department store. I'm unsure of the build date as there isn't a whole lot of information on this mall.

The mall has multiple entrances, but the two that stand out the most are the 'downtown direct' entrance and the mall parking entrance. Both entrances are dramatically different as seen below.

Somewhat modernized entrance to the mall's parking lot.

Very vintage entrance from pedestrians coming from downtown Meadville.

Big Lots (former Weston's)

A long corridor to Dollar General

Dentist at the mall.

Big Lots has a wall that divides furniture and mattresses from the rest of the store. One must navigate through the displays to reach the mall or the rest of Big Lots.

Overall this mall is actually in pretty good shape with a bunch of local businesses. I don't recall seeing many, if any vacancies here. Other malls could learn a thing or two from this mall.