A new Dollar Tree is set to start the ball rolling on a sizable expansion of North Suffolk shopping center Bennett’s Creek Crossing.

Construction on the Dollar Tree, a well-known retail chain operating thousands of stores across the country, started five weeks ago, said build superintendent Kevin Ross, of P.G. Harris Construction.

“We’re going good,” he said at the build site Tuesday, adding that rain had caused some delays.

All going to plan, he said, the 10,000 square-foot building would be turned over to Dollar Tree in August. “We’re basically just giving them an empty shell,” he added.

Bennett’s Creek Crossing is a joint venture of Norfolk-based private real estate company Robinson Development Group and an entity owned by Robert M. Stanton and Teresa C. Peters, chairman and president/partner respectively of Stanton Partners, another commercial real estate company also based in Norfolk.

The city of Suffolk approved development of the 27-acre shopping center on the corner of Bridge and Shoulders Hill Road toward the end of 2003.

Stanton said the Dollar Tree will be considered Bennett’s Creek Crossing’s second anchor alongside the 58,000 square-foot Farm Fresh, which in April was named the best of the chain’s 44 stores, a designation based on customer service and financial results.
Dollar Tree stores have done “a wonderful job” in other shopping centers developed by Stanton Partners, he said.

“They will do great sales and provide an interesting variety of merchandise for the consumers of North Suffolk,” he said.

Stanton envisions an additional 15,000 square feet of retail floor space eventually surrounding the Dollar Tree, which is a separate building from that housing Farm Fresh.

Stanton did not name any stores in the cards for that area, but Kevin O’Keefe, a leasing agent on Bennett’s Creek Crossing, said interest is strong, citing an ABC store and Pizza Hut as recent new tenants, “and we actually just leased a Mexican restaurant as well.”

Stanton, meanwhile, predicts that growth in North Suffolk isn’t about to taper off any time soon.

“North Suffolk is a story that doesn’t need much explanation,” he said. “It’s the hot growth area in Hampton Roads right now, and I think long term it will continue to be a hot growth area.”

He said that Bennett’s Creek Crossing offers a “different shopping experience” than Harbour View, which “has done a wonderful job” in moving the area forward.