Dollar Tree has opened its 9,500th store at 6150 College Drive in Suffolk, marking the discount retailer's 40th anniversary with both a new storefront and a $40 million pledge to its home region of Hampton Roads. The milestone opening pairs a local retail expansion with a sweeping community investment plan aimed at everyday essentials, job training and neighborhood improvements.
As reported by The Virginian-Pilot, the Suffolk store opening coincides with Dollar Tree's 40th anniversary celebrations this year. According to a Dollar Tree press release, the company is committing $40 million through a newly created Dollar Tree Impact Fund administered by the Hampton Roads Community Foundation, with the money earmarked to support nonprofit organizations and community-led projects addressing local needs and neighborhoods. Dollar Tree is headquartered just up the road in Chesapeake, Virginia, making the Suffolk opening something of a hometown moment for the chain.
Where the $40 Million Is Supposed to Go
The release states the Impact Fund will focus on three areas: expanding access to food and other everyday necessities, supporting career readiness and job skills training, and creating cleaner, safer and more welcoming community spaces. Dollar Tree says it plans to activate that commitment by working with national nonprofit partners on more than 400 community-impact projects across the country, according to the same company statement.
The chain is also rolling out a Kindness Grant Program, an associate-directed initiative that lets employees help decide which nonprofit organizations receive grants, per the press release. Specifics on how much of the $40 million might flow directly to Suffolk or elsewhere in Hampton Roads were not detailed in the announcement, and neither were particulars on timing, grant amounts or how the Kindness Grant Program will actually be administered.
A Bigger Footprint, With Some Churn
Chain Store Age reported that Dollar Tree now operates more than 9,500 stores and 19 distribution centers across 48 contiguous states and seven Canadian provinces, employing more than 150,000 associates. Notably, that outlet's account of the new store described it as something Dollar Tree “will soon open” rather than confirming the opening had already happened, a framing that differs from the company's own release announcing the store as opened — a discrepancy neither source resolved.
The Suffolk opening lands amid a broader reshuffling of Dollar Tree's store base. The company ended its first quarter with 9,382 stores in the United States and Canada after adding 113 new locations, according to a Yahoo Finance report. For fiscal 2026, the company plans to close roughly 75 stores while opening around 400 new ones, the same report notes — a figure Chain Store Age also cited in describing Dollar Tree's recent-quarter openings.
Shifting Prices and a Shifting Customer Base
Part of that expansion involves converting stores to a multi-price format stocking merchandise from $3 to $5, a shift that has already reached around 5,900 locations chainwide after roughly 630 stores adopted or opened under the format in the first quarter alone, per the Yahoo Finance account. The same reporting cited a Bloomberg News analysis finding that 49% of Dollar Tree's new store openings over the past six years landed in higher-income metro neighborhoods, a trend that marks a notable shift for a chain historically associated with budget-conscious shoppers in lower-income areas.
Financially, Dollar Tree reported adjusted earnings per share of $1.74 and revenue of $5.0 billion for its first quarter, and the company is projecting fiscal-year 2026 adjusted earnings per share of $6.70 to $7.10 on net sales between $20.5 billion and $20.7 billion, according to the same financial reporting. Against that backdrop of national growth and pricing changes, the Suffolk store and its accompanying Hampton Roads Community Foundation partnership represent Dollar Tree's attempt to tie its 40th-anniversary milestone directly back to the communities surrounding its Chesapeake headquarters.
