Four of the locations are being leased from Pan Pacific Retail Properties. They include 6,842 sf in the Oregon City Shopping Center at 1900 SE McLoughlin Boulevard; 10,059 sf in the Milwaukie Marketplace Shopping Center at 10830 SE Oak St.; 21,360 sf in the Foster Square Shopping Center at 6868 SE Foster Rd. in Portland; and 22,025 sf in the Rockwood Plaza located at Southeast Division Street and Southeast 182nd Avenue in Gresham.

As for the other two locations, Dollar Tree leased 16,208 sf from Oak Street One in the Hillsboro Plaza at 440 SW Oak St., and 6,296 sf from Regency Realty in the Cherry Park Shopping Center located at Cherry Park and Hogan Road in Troutdale.

The neighborhood dollar stores are an offshoot of the old "five-and-dime" variety stores like Woolworth and Ben Franklin. The rise of big-box discount retailers like Wal-Mart put these stores out of business, but left a niche for super-inexpensive items that the dollar stores are filling.

Three major chains are currently proliferating "dollar" stores. They are Dollar General, Family Dollar and Dollar Tree, which also operates stores under the names Dollar Bill$, Only $ 1.00, ONLY $ ONE and Dollar Express. All together, they number more than 10,000 locations with 55,800 employees and are beginning to push into the Western United States.

Family Dollar has added more than 2,000 stores to the 3,689-store chain during the last decade. It has added nearly 1,300 in the last five fiscal years. Dollar General opened its 5,000th store on Feb. 1. Half of its stores are less than six year old. Dollar Tree operates 1,729 stores in 36 states. In 2000, it opened 233 new stores, expanded 98 and closed 11.