Construction work has begun on the new Dollar General store on King Street in Boscawen.
Crews began work at 169 King St., in mid-April, according to Town Administrator Alan Hardy. The store is expected to open in late August.
Work at the store site in the next couple of months will mainly entail tree clearing, soil work and installing septic and water systems, according to a work schedule posted on the town of Boscawen website. The actual construction is expected to begin in late June.
Boscawen’s Dollar General is one of at least 30 that will have opened in the state in the last seven years, a spokesperson for Dollar General said.
The approval process for the store took nearly three years. It was slowed by a lawsuit by neighbors of the site, Andrew Newcomb and Elaine Clow, who claimed that the Boscawen planning and zoning boards acted in “illegal and unreasonable” ways when they approved Dollar General’s site plan for the store in 2017.
The neighbors cited conflicts surrounding snow removal, aesthetics, traffic and fire code violations.
But a Merrimack County Superior Court judge disagreed with Newcomb and Clow. Judge Brian Tucker said in his February 2019 decision that the two boards did their due diligence when considering Dollar General’s proposal.
“The record does not support their contention that either board acted in bad faith,” Tucker’s decision read.
The Dollar General store in Boscawen is an estimated $1.2 million construction project, according to a report contracted by Dollar General and completed by Massachusetts consultant RKG Associates.
It will provide an average of 10 jobs in the area, according to the report. Dollar General plans for 10 transactions an hour between 8 a.m. and 10 p.m., seven days a week. Deliveries, pickups and offsite snow removal would occur during off-peak hours between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m.