Standing in front of Pete’s grocery store on Historic King Drive on Milwaukee’s Northside and seeing the vibrancy, the loyal customers bustling in and out, the fresh fruit and veggies spilling out the front door, you’d never guess that ten years ago this spot almost became a Dollar Tree.

The property was originally Brooks Plaza and included a We Energies payment center and local retailers, and when it closed, the property owner first attempted to get a Walgreens, then a liquor store, to move in. Finally, he proposed a grocery store. This was important because at the time in 2013, there was no grocery store within two miles of the Historic King Drive Business Improvement District.

The community soon found out that what was supposed to be a grocery store was actually going to be a Dollar Tree, a company with a well-known record of dangerous labor violations, unfair pricing, and undercutting local grocery stores to contribute to food deserts. Soon, more than 100 community members organized in resistance in a grassroots movement. In June 2013, many of these members marched to the Common Council and protested. When the Council finally had the decision to approve the grocery license, they denied it. 

Deshea Agee, who joined Main Street America’s Board of Directors in 2021, was an Economic Development Specialist for the City of Milwaukee at the time, working to improve the Historic King Drive business district. At the time, there was no Main Street district. He spoke with Alderman Jose Perez and Alderwoman Milele Coggs to try to reach a solution on how to fill the vacant space. Alderman Perez suggested that Deshea speak with Pete’s Fruit Market, a Latino-owned grocer with a single Southside store at the time.

Like many other cities, Milwaukee is marked by lines of segregation, with the Southside a predominantly Latino neighborhood and the Northside the Black neighborhood, so it was notable for a Latino-owned grocer to come to the neighborhood. While Pete’s team worked on plans for the grocery store itself, the Milwaukee Economic Development Corporation took over the property and worked with developer Kalan Haywood to complete improvements that met Pete Tsitiridis’ specifications. The store opened in 2015.

Pete’s has now been going strong for ten years, and is an anchor business in a district that has had $4.2 million in private investment, 23 net new businesses, and 94 net new jobs since 2017. 

Growth for Good on Main Streets

Kennedy Smith, Senior Researcher at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and former director of the National Main Street Center from 1991 – 2004, says that Milwaukee’s consideration of Dollar Tree as a grocery store was highly unusual. Dollar stores are general merchandise retailers, not grocery stores — a fact even the chains acknowledge in their official filings, where they are classified under NAICS code 452319 (“All Other General Merchandise Stores”). While they stock a small amount of food, it is largely shelf-stable rather than fresh, making it misleading to call them grocery stores.

This confusion has surfaced in rare zoning disputes, such as an ongoing case in Cascade, Maryland, but overall, cities do not recognize dollar stores as grocery outlets. In fact, more than 100 municipalities have taken steps to restrict dollar store development, citing community health and safety concerns. These restrictions are especially relevant in urban neighborhoods where dollar chains disproportionately cluster in Black and Brown communities — a pattern researchers, such as University of Georgia professor Jerry Shannon, describe as racially exploitative.

Kennedy shared that when cities block dollar store development, several mechanisms are used. Some of them use dispersal ordinances, which mandate that a new dollar store cannot be located within a certain number of miles of an existing one — typically one mile in urban areas and five miles in rural areas. Some cities require additional conditional use permits for dollar stores, with conditions such as not harming an existing food store or not increasing traffic. And in a couple of instances, cities have flat-out denied permits because they aren’t in the best interest of the community’s health, safety, and welfare.

As for Historic King Drive in Milwaukee, it became an official Main Street in 2017 under Deshea’s leadership. He set out to establish King Drive as the ​“Best King Drive in the Nation,” and Pete’s, now a beloved local institution, is a huge part of that distinction. Dr. Martin Luther King Drive is a vibrant Main Street commercial district without a dollar store in sight.