Limestone County could soon be home to no fewer than 20 Dollar General stores, an official confirmed this week.

The county’s 18th Dollar General store is now under construction at 27547 Copeland Road in eastern Limestone County. Two other locations are being considered off Mooresville Road — one just north of U.S. 72 and another on the Limestone County side of Old Railroad Bed Road in Harvest.

If the two other locations are built, they would be the county’s 19th and 20th stores.

Dollar General spokeswoman Angela Petkovic said the Goodlettsville, Tennessee-based company is in “due diligence” on the latter two sites, meaning the locations are being reviewed but no commitment to build has been made.

“Based on our current timeline, we anticipate to have a final decision on the Athens and Harvest locations by early 2019,” she said.

The tentative opening date for the Copeland Road store is spring 2019, but Petkovic said the date could change depending on construction progress. The last Dollar General to open in Limestone is at 28091 Wooley Springs Road.

In a county of 94,000 residents, a 20th Dollar General store would mean one store for every 4,700 residents. With 607 square miles in the county, that would also equate to one store every 30.35 miles.

So why is the retail chain so prolific in Limestone County? A release from the company said “meeting customers’ needs” is the top priority when choosing store locations.

“We know convenience is a major factor in our customers’ shopping decisions as we generally serve customers within a three-to-five-mile radius, or a 10-minute drive,” the release said. “We also take demographic trends, competitive factors, traffic patterns and community concerns into consideration.”

The individual stores are also relatively inexpensive to build and staff. In a December 2017 article in the Wall Street Journal, Dan Nieser, the company’s senior vice president of real estate and store development, said it costs $250,000 to open a new store. About six to 10 employees are hired at each location.

Dollar General has just shy of 15,000 stores across 44 states, and nearly 50 percent are located in southern states. The company planned to open 900 stores nationally in 2018 at a rate of three stores a day.

The company has been an active community partner in Limestone County, however, and regularly provides grants to local schools, libraries and literacy groups. In September, Athens High School and Athens State University Foundation were each awarded $2,000 grants from the Dollar General Literacy Foundation. The grants were part of $100,000 in youth literacy grants awarded to Alabama schools and nonprofit organizations. The statewide grants were part of more than $3.4 million awarded nationally by the company’s foundation.

Those interested in applying to work for Dollar General should visit www.dollargeneral.com/careers. For more on the company’s foundation, visit www.dgliteracy.com.