DUBLIN -- A section of downtown Dublin once home to an auto repair shop, a post office and a soda fountain, will soon be the site of a Walgreens pharmacy, a development town officials hope will spur increased retail growth in the area.

Dublin Town Manager Bill Parker said demolition permits were pulled in late October to bring a 13,650-square-foot store to the southwest corner of Giles Road and U.S. 11, where it will sit diagonally across from a CVS Pharmacy.

According to a news release, developer Mid-Atlantic Commercial Properties expects Walgreens to open its doors next fall.

When it does, Dublin's downtown corridor will look significantly different from the way it did when then-fire Chief R.S. "Buzz" Cecil stopped there for lunch in the 1970s.

Back then, the strip boasted the Dublin Sundry, which offered a menu of hot dogs, hamburgers and Coke floats.

"That was the hangout place," Cecil said of the sundry. "It was a landmark."

In the decades since the business closed, the building, and those around it, deteriorated.

"As far as the sundry was concerned, I kind of expected that I would hear some sentimentality about it, but the buildings had fallen into disrepair and really were going to require some investment to bring them back to where they would be in good shape," Parker said. "I think that everybody realized that probably it [redevelopment] was something that needed to be done, even though it was sentimental."

And the hope is that redevelopment won't stop there.

"I hope it jump-starts downtown, quite frankly," Parker said. "We still have some available property downtown."

It may not be a vain hope.

Parker said he has noticed that since Wal-Mart moved in just outside Dublin and the deal with Walgreens was finalized, the town has received significantly more attention from retail developers than it did in years past.

"We're getting calls all the time now," he said. "That's something else that's very new to Dublin."

"You have to land somebody," Parker added. "That's always been a kind of a given in this economic development thing ... and I think it's very true. Otherwise, you just don't seem to get the private investor or the national franchise to give you a look."