Dollar General – dubbed the nation’s largest small-box discount retailer – is putting its money down on Manteca.

And in doing so, it is joining a growing number of firms opening businesses in Manteca’s established commercial corridors amid signs the economy is shifting to recovery mode.

Dollar General will open later this year in the storefront that Walgreen’s once occupied in the retail strip center where Blockbuster Video is located at North Main and Alameda Streets.

On the southeast corner of the same intersection, F&M Banks is working toward a ground breaking for a Manteca branch. The bank is expected to have a Santa Barbara-style motif.

Further down Main Street on the vacant Mervyn’s Department Store, Burlington Coat Factory is planning to locate a new store later this year as well.

A number of mom-and-pop ventures will open in the coming months or have just recently opened including the Vietnamese restaurant off Historical Pizza Drive across from Target at Spreckels Park. Another restaurant is also getting ready to open farther to the east on Historical Plaza Way across from Home Depot.

That is in addition to businesses such as Siesta Spa preparing to open on East Yosemite Avenue.

Nationally, Dollar General has more than 9,800 stores. They will add at least six in San Joaquin County this year - one in Manteca, in the remodeled Mar-Val storefront in Ripon on Main Street, and four locations in Stockton.

The firm’s marketing statement notes, “Dollar General ranks among the largest retailers of quality brands made by America’s most trusted manufacturers, such as Proctor & Gamble, Kimberly-Clark, Unilever, Kellogg’s, General Mills, Nabisco, Hanes, PepsiCo, and Coca-Cola.”

Dollar general pioneered the one-dollar-only retail concept. Today, about a fourth of the merchandise sold by Dollar general is a dollar or less.

Last year the chain’s revenues exceeded $13 billion.

The emphasis of recognized brands and a bit higher price point is a strategy that sets the chain apart from the pair of dollar-style stores already in Manteca. Both happen to be Dollar Tree stores.