Fairfield County, SC (WLTX) - After the Walmart closed in Winnsboro, Fairfield County residents were left with one grocery store. Many were forced to travel outside of the county limits to find the goods they needed. Three months later two stores are on their way to take it's place.
"That'll be great. That'll be fantastic if we can get something like that around Winnsboro," Alberto Roman said.
Roman has lived in Fairfield County for the last 23 years. He said it hurt when the Walmart closed in January.
"Now we have to go all the way down to Killian Road, so it's a twenty minute drive. Not everybody can afford to drive all the way down there. Some people have to suffer if they don't have the stuff right here," he said.
"It knocked us to our knees, but we rebounded. We've got IGA that is coming here and they are going to operate this building and there is a Roses store that is coming that will be occupying a building further down the mall there," Senator Creighton Coleman said.
IGA is a South Carolina based grocery chain and Roses is a discount department store chain based out of North Carolina. The stores will be located in the Fairfield Square Shopping Center along US 321.
"It's very important, not only to the shoppers, but as far as our emotional well-being of our community," Coleman said.
News 19 also spoke with Mike Metzger of Sumwalt Associates. Metzger is the developer for the IGA property and said that the store will be called KJ's, which is a part of the IGA family group.
"They are going to keep the footprint as it is, the same size building. They'll redo the facade a little bit, change the interior, update it and just sell groceries," Metzger said.
According to Coleman, both stores should be open by the end of this summer.
News 19 reached out to both parent companies of IGA and Roses, but both have yet to respond.