Archived Story
County must convey vital message
Published 12:00am Sunday, June 10, 2012Dirt was tossed in the air Friday morning at the future site of Fruth Pharmacy in Ironton, the latest in a series of groundbreakings in Lawrence County.
As is often the case with events like these, local elected officials and economic development leaders talk about how happy they are to have the project and what it means to the community. Sometimes these individuals played vital roles in the project and other times not so much.
But, on Friday, it appeared that those who spoke were part of the former group instead of the latter.
When Lynne Fruth, president of the company, was speaking, she hit on a theme that has seemed to run as an undercurrent at several of the recent events including the groundbreaking of the Ironton-Russell Bridge.
It is that Lawrence County is business friendly.
Fruth officials had nothing but good things to say about how smoothly the work to locate here in Ironton has gone, heaping praise on the mayor, the Lawrence Economic Development Corp., the county commissioners and others. In fact, she said it may have been the smoothest development project she has ever been associated with. That says something since the Fruth company now has 26 stores in Ohio and West Virginia.
This is an important message, one that we need to get out to citizens, potential developers and, ultimately, the entire world.
We will say it again: Lawrence County is business friendly. That means Ironton is business friendly. South Point is business friendly. Chesapeake is business friendly. Coal Grove is business friendly. Proctorville is business friendly.
Economic growth is often tied to a host of factors, all of which are somewhat moving parts, so to speak, and must align perfectly for a project to happen.
It appears that Lawrence County is doing a good job of getting all these facets pointed in the same direction.
The result is progress.
Progress? Does progress have an ending point? Is too much progress a bad thing? Can one person’s progress harm the progress of another? Can progress in science, technology and human rights harm progress in religion and morality? Does economic progress result in poorly developed or poorly planned growth? What are the limits of progress? What social and environmental sacrifices will be made necessary for progress? Will the rate or type of economic growth have severe consequences for the environment? Does progress create more consumption, more waste?
Drugstores in Ironton, Ohio: Rite Aid, CVS (2 or 3?), Staley, now Fruth.
Just curious why we need so many drugstores and banks?
Aren’t these ‘chains’ a detriment to locally owned businesses?
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bigkahuna! How did Obama get in this county message? Its plain to see you know nothing abut President Obama,other
than what you hear or read that your “Right Wingnut” friends say.As far as I’m concerned you’re a stupid person,with very little to add to these posts ,except how you hate Obama and most Democrats.
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bigkahuna; A rather radical statement, don’t you think?
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If obama had his way he would shut down all private business.
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“By my count we already have 5 pharmacies in this town…”
The title of this article is ‘County must convey a vital message.” I guess “the county” succeeded. The message is this.
Pharmacies are a booming business in this county. I see this as being manifested in 3 ways:
1. A senior-citizen heavy population
2. A prescription drug abuse epidemic
3. A full pipeline for keeping the jails and courtrooms full
Just my observations. I could be totally wrong here.
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By my count we already have 5 pharmacies in this town [2 Staley’s locations; 2 CVS locations, and Rite Aid. Bentley’s recently closed their attempt to add an additional pharmacy to the competition. How many more can this community support? Being “business friendly” is fine; but is there really enough “demand” in our population-size area for yet another similar service supplier?
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