A locally owned Hispanic supermarket is stepping into a northeast Charlotte neighborhood that has gone without a full-service grocery store for years. Dany’s Supermarket has filed city paperwork to convert the former Dollar General at 221 Heathway Drive into a grocery offering fresh produce, a fish counter and a full-service meat department for the Newell and Hidden Valley neighborhoods.
Permit and renovation plans
Dany’s submitted a commercial alteration permit outlining about $510,000 in interior and exterior work at the site, a roughly 1.2-acre corner lot at Heathway Drive and North Tryon Street. The July 3 city filing details the planned renovations and parcel information, according to The Charlotte Observer.
What Dany’s will offer
The grocer’s website promotes international aisles, fresh produce, a full-service fish market and a custom-cutting meat counter designed to serve a range of ethnicities and nationalities. The same site lists the company’s existing store on The Plaza, giving Dany’s a local customer base and experience to lean on as it expands, according to Dany’s Supermarket.
Ownership and the building
Mecklenburg County property records show the more than 9,400-square-foot former Dollar General changed hands in January, when SMD 6733 LLC bought the property for nearly $2.2 million. State filings list Felix Daniel Reyes as the registrant and president of Dany’s, information documented by The Charlotte Observer.
Why it matters
Newell and Hidden Valley sit in census tracts that officials and researchers classify as low-income, low-access areas, often called food deserts, where full supermarkets are scarce. Local reporting and county officials note that about 15% of Mecklenburg residents live in areas with limited supermarket access, a gap highlighted in the USDA’s Food Access Research Atlas. The USDA defines low-access tracts as places where at least 500 people, or 33% of residents, live more than one mile from a supermarket. See WSOC and the USDA for more.
Next steps and timeline
The city’s permitting and review process, including local development permits and county building permits, will determine when work can start at the Heathway Drive site. The Charlotte-area grocery market remains strong, with recent industry coverage putting regional supermarket sales in the tens of billions of dollars, a sign of solid demand even as some neighborhoods still lack nearby options. The final city permit record will set the timetable for construction and opening. For more, see the permitting overview from the City of Charlotte and regional market coverage from Yahoo/Chain Store Guide.
