DG Market, owned by Dollar General, comes to Essex

Plans to move into long-shuttered Colonial Market

— A new DG Market, a grocery store affiliated with Dollar General, is moving into the long-shuttered Colonial Market in the Bokum Plaza at 125 Westbrook Road.

This will be the only supermarket in Essex, possibly opening as early as February.

The plaza was recently sold for $1.875 million to 125 Bokum Center LLC. The 18,500-square-foot supermarket had been vacant since the pandemic, when Colonial Market, the town’s only grocery store, was shuttered.

“There is no other grocery store in Essex. People have to travel out of Essex,” said Jay Morris of O,R&L Commercial Real Estate, who is also a partner in 125 Bokum Center LLC.

DG Market will take up 12,500 square feet with the remaining 6,000 offered to another tenant.

Morris said the DG Market will be a departure from the earlier hybrid grocery stores Dollar General owns and operates in other parts of the country.

“They are all DG Markets now,” Morris said about Dollar General’s foray into supermarkets. “When they first started, they did a hybrid called a Dollar General Market, and now it’s DG Market, which is its own line.”

DG Markets open in areas that are underserved by supermarkets with populations under 20,000, according to its website, dollargeneral. com.

Essex is the start for Dollar General’s entry into the Northeast, according to Morris.

“They’re going to do dozens of stores in Connecticut over the next couple of years — they’re all going to be DG Markets,” Morris said.

“It’s mainly a grocery store,” he added. “I imagine there will be some overlap of products. Dollar General now, they carry a lot of things a lot of supermarkets carry — household goods, cleaning supplies.

“So that stuff will probably be the same, but it will carry over now to produce, meats, all of that,” he said.

DG Market is different than Dollar General Market, Morris said.

He noted that DG Market has “the same national parent company, but a totally different product mix” than the Dollar General stores.

“There are about 2,000 DG Markets nationwide, but they are mostly in the South and West. DG Market is planning to expand heavily into the Northeast over the next few years, and I think Essex will be their first store to open in this region,” Morris said.

The reaction in town has been positive since 125 Bokum Center bought the plaza in early December, Morris said.

“Everyone we talk to is excited that a new market is coming to town,” he said.

When 125 Bokum Center LLC first bought the shopping center, he added, “Everybody we talked to was like, ‘You got to find a supermarket.’ We had other tenants who were looking at it, but everybody wanted a grocery, so that was our focus.”

First Selectman Norm Needleman said he is pleased a tenant is finally renting the empty space.

“I’m glad the property is not in limbo anymore. It’s been an eyesore for a long time,” Needleman said.

Needleman said the reaction in town has been fairly mixed. Some residents have asked him, “How can that be allowed?” while others, “old-timers,” have told him, “Hey at least it’s not empty,” he recounted.

The plan is to open the new grocery store at the beginning of February, Morris said.

“Basically, they demolished everything inside, and they’re rebuilding it now. They’re moving very quickly and expecting to be open by beginning of February, that is their target.”

DG Market has all the town approvals it needs and construction on the building’s interior is going on now, according to Morris.