Dollar General (former Fred's), Goodman at Tchulahoma, Southaven, MS

Today's post highlights DeSoto County, MS, retail.

Unintentionally, I missed out on getting a Fred's post published in 2025, so it's about time I atone for that with my first post of 2026! After finally touring our last liquidating Fred's store in 2023, we began a new "life after Fred's" series with a tour of the Byhalia Roses Express in 2024. While there are certainly some unique reuses out there, many former Fred's buildings later became occupied by the same handful of predictable players, and the one we'll be seeing today comes as no surprise at all: the ubiquitous Dollar General.

For the longest time home to only one Fred's store, located in its original business district near Stateline Road, the city of Southaven later gained two more in short succession: one on Church Road which opened in 2012, and another on Goodman Road at its intersection with Tchulahoma Road which opened in 2013. We previously toured the Church Road store on the blog here, and over on flickr, l_dawg2000 thoroughly documented the Stateline Road store's liquidation. Impressively, l_dawg also shared the life cycle of this Goodman/Tchulahoma Fred's store in a mere four photos, as reposted below:

March 1, 2013

For this week's Fred's Friday, thought I would do something a bit different: document a store's entire life cycle in just four photos (yeah, I'm afraid this location was fairly short-lived). Here we see the ground still being cleared back in the spring of 2013 for the Southaven Fred's on Goodman near Tchulahoma Rd., with the sign announcing "here we grow again".

April 28, 2013

By the time I snapped this next photo a number of weeks later, all the walls and most, maybe all of the ceiling support structure had been installed.

July 20, 2013

Here's a shot of the place not long after it was open for business. If I'm not mistaken, this was my first time seeing this style of Fred's, and I remember thinking it was quite snazzy-looking!

July 20, 2019

Fast forward 6 years later, and we have this sad scene: present-day this Fred's location is holding it's closing sale. The look-alike Fred's on Church Rd. is closing as well, leaving Southaven with zero Fred's stores left.

Courtesy Google Street View

Courtesy Google Street View

Incidentally, like l_dawg, Google Street View also managed to capture the store in its early days. If I'm reading the date on that "here we grow again" sign correctly, the store's grand opening was Friday, July 19, 2013. It may well be that Google passed by on that very morning; notice the crowd standing outside the doors in that first image. While not on the true corner of the intersection, there was a back entrance into the Fred's (which faces Goodman Road) from Tchulahoma, seen above (complete with a tiny little Fred's sign with a pointing arrow).

Courtesy DeSoto Times-Tribune

Courtesy DeSoto Times-Tribune

Courtesy Google Maps

Courtesy DeSoto Times-Tribune

While I never photographed the store while it was in operation, here are some assorted photos, all the way from the ribbon cutting to the store closing. As you can see, it was pretty much a carbon copy of its slightly older sibling on Church Road. In its vacant state, this store also got some coverage from YouTuber WallieB26, which you can see here.

Despite being the last Fred's built in Southaven, this one was the first one to be retenanted, with Dollar General showing the new store as "coming soon" on its store locator as of September 13, 2020 (the store had closed approximately just twelve months prior). Say what you will about Dollar Generals being everywhere -- but based on the map above, the specific location of this former Fred's was actually very convenient to fill in what was otherwise a pretty big gap in coverage for them. (Also, I can't remember where I found that little Fred's icon, but isn't it cute?!)

About two weeks after my store locator capture above, there was still nothing on the property to identify Dollar General was coming soon; even the blacked-out monument sign along Goodman Road was still flashing Fred's old messages! (It reads "Welcome all Tricare customers!!!" in this pic; fun fact, you can also see this very same monument sign still under construction in the Google Street View pic from earlier.) That said, exterior modifications were definitely being made, and it wasn't long before signage made it up on the storefront as well as the monument sign, now sans message board, as shown below.

The store wasn't shabby-looking beforehand by any means, but Dollar General definitely classed up the place. It was obvious that they would swap out Fred's blue entry area and green awning, of course, but DG also went the extra mile to install new molding along the roofline, new stonework columns and accents along the base of the building, and faux shutters and decorative lamps. The store looks quite nice these days (in comparison, its Church Road sibling is now a wig and beauty shop). 

I don't have a ton of experience with Dollar General stores, so perhaps in their newer builds and their remodels to older stores, they are keeping up with this more polished appearance. I do remember being rather impressed at the presentation and atmosphere of the store, though. The grocery department was immediately to your left upon entering, with perpendicular aisles and refrigerated/frozen foods cases lining the perimeter walls.

This corner of the store most likely was Fred's clothing department previously, judging by the glue scars from the wood laminate flooring. The rest of the store would have had the same polished concrete which Dollar General has kept.

The design language in this store is consistent with what we saw at the Dollar General (former Walmart Express) in Sardis back in 2017; I particularly like the angled design of the goosenecks over the frozen foods, and the vertical goosenecks in the aisle in the background in the first pic above.

About midway down the left-side wall, the coolers give way to shelves of paper products, and beyond that... we find a large empty area, walled off with new wooden supports affixed to the ceiling. I wasn't expecting that! While a portion of it is likely being used for stockroom space, the sheer volume of the area closed off from customer access suggests to me that maybe this store is acting as a mini fulfillment center of sorts? I don't really have any other guesses here, but I'd estimate that's a good one-fourth of the salesfloor back there (and you can tell it goes all the way back to the exterior of the building based on the wall material, too).

Aside from the super obvious peek into the empty space at the back left corner (which presumably is left open as an emergency exit but also perhaps a forklift turnaround area, given the yellow lines on the floor?), it's also not too difficult to tell that the back actionway is just a row of gondola shelves forming a makeshift wall, rather than placed against a real one. Recently, I was in yet another former Fred's of this same prototype (this one in Pelahatchie, although I resisted the urge to photograph it!) which is now a DG Market, essentially a regular Dollar General store with a slightly expanded grocery section including fresh produce, and I don't recall seeing a similar closed-off space at that store. Is it possible that Fred's salesfloor footprint is simply too large for the typical Dollar General? Fred's did have pharmacy counters, after all; keep that in mind, as we'll get back to that in a moment.

In the meantime, here in the center of the store, I was very impressed by Dollar General's home department! Lots of home decor and such here, which didn't appear to be of poor quality, with very nice placement in the middle of the salesfloor, with a short-height aisle and overhead signage both calling attention to the space. In between my two pics of the home goods, we also have a shot looking towards the entrance showing more of the perpendicular food aisles.

Returning now to the back wall dilemma, with the first shot above looking into the back right corner of the store from the gap in the makeshift shelving blockade. Here we can see a bunch of rolling metal fixtures as well as signs taped to the wall indicating "delivery zone," so perhaps it truly is just stockroom space? That said, though, Fred's had stockrooms of its own, located in space along the right-hand wall just past the pharmacy counter (identifiable from the fact that the right-hand wall of the salesfloor was the only one not composed of concrete blocks). The second pic above looks up towards the front of the store where the pharmacy counter would have been, and it appears the drywall wall from Fred's is still intact; notice, too, the stockroom door visible to the right of all the metal carts in the first pic. So if that space is still present as well as this new back-of-store enclosure, I simply can't fathom what Dollar General is using both spaces for.

Perhaps one of y'all might be able to shed some light on this mystery for me -- I'll certainly be keeping an eye on the comments below! Anyway, as for the rest of the space, it's definitely a clean, bright, well-organized store. Maybe it was only that way because it had just recently opened (lol!), but I'd like to think Dollar General is doing its best to keep the store nice and neat looking, anyway. By the way, since I never mentioned it earlier, I photographed this store in January 2021 (so that "now open" banner on the storefront had been up there for some time).

As you could see in the previous batch of pics, this store has three checkouts along the front end, two manned and one self. They also left all the windows along the storefront open to the salesfloor, welcoming in a bunch of natural light. Finally, there's a big yellow greeting sign in the shape of Dollar General's logo hanging just inside the entrance -- although I think they hung it up backwards; it feels like the "Hello, Low Prices" should be what you see walking into the store, with "Big Savings" shown as you exit!

Back outside again, despite all of DG's exterior modifications, we find two distinct Fred's holdovers: first, if you zoom in, you can see the old pharmacy drive-thru awning still intact on the right side of the building, with the "DRIVE-THRU" lettering still present too, no less. Second, we can see the cart return built into the landscaping island, just as we saw at the former Byhalia store.

Last but not least, here are a couple final looks at the building, with the (poor) road shot shown above also capturing a glimpse at its neighbor, a similar-style brick building housing an ATC Fitness location; next to that, a nutrition/supplement store was constructed. The northeast corner of Goodman and Tchulahoma itself is home to an auto glass shop.

Courtesy LoopNet -- vintage storefront signage and shingle awning

Courtesy LoopNet -- the awning was later replaced with metal and painted green

Courtesy LoopNet -- notice the high-rise interstate sign retained the old logo

Courtesy DeSoto Times-Tribune -- this store was selected for closure earlier than the other two in Southaven

Courtesy LoopNet -- post-closure, sitting vacant

For completeness' sake, since I never personally visited or photographed it during its liquidation sale (and since both other Southaven Fred's stores have been featured on the blog already), we'll wrap up with a few pics of the Stateline Road Fred's, which as you can see (and as we discussed) was obviously much older. That store is currently under construction to convert into a new municipal court building for the City of Southaven, which you can read more about here. I'm glad that all three stores in town have found new occupants! In fact, all of the former DeSoto County Fred's stores have new tenants, although two of them have already cycled through to their second post-Fred's operator...

I hope y'all enjoyed this next installment in our "life after Fred's" series! I've got a handful more of these up my sleeve, along with other posts of course, so you'll just have to come back and see where we end up next. Until then and as always, thanks for reading, and have fun exploring the retail world wherever you are!

Retail Retell