In less than two months Fruth Pharmacy executives plan to have the grand opening of their new store across from St. Mary’s Medical Center, Ironton Campus.

The tentative date of that opening is Friday, Nov. 30. However the pharmacy will have a soft opening earlier in the month

Groundbreaking for the 10,000-square-foot store was in June at the site on Campbell Drive at the intersection of State Route 141 and U.S. 52. The Ironton store will be the 26th Fruth store in the chain that has pharmacies in Ohio and West Virginia.

“The operation will be really similar to most of our stores,” Lynne Fruth, president and chairman of the board of Fruth, said.

Besides the pharmacy, the store will also offer one-of-a-kind gifts, including floral arrangements from live and silk flowers done on site.

“Since the smaller floral shops have gone out over the years, we do a fair amount of work for funerals, memorial sprays, throws, wind chimes,” Fruth said.

The pharmacy will also provide delivery of prescriptions to customers and floral arrangements to funeral homes.

The Fruth store in Ironton will also partner with the Ironton-Lawrence County Community Action Organization to provide prescriptions at a lower cost for qualifying patrons.

“This primarily impacts people who are uninsured and do not qualify for Medicare,” Fruth said. “If those individuals are sent by a physician from the CAO, they can qualify for prescriptions at a much-reduced price through the federal government. … It is quite a lot of savings.”

Although the store has not opened, the Fruth presence was recently felt when the company announced it would offer a scholarship to a qualifying Lawrence County high school student to Ohio University Southern.

“It will be awarded to this class of seniors in high school,” Fruth said.

The cooperation from the city and county economic development leaders has impressed the CEO.

“We have gone into a lot of communities and oftentimes in a community, you have different groups of people in some form of power, development groups, county commission, city council,” Fruth said “Often times those groups tend to be at odds with one another and have their own agenda. People (in Lawrence County) are working together. There is such a level of cooperation. (They say) ‘Let’s do what is best for Lawrence County and Ironton and let us work together.’ Everybody comes to the table. It is such a pleasure to get this store up and running.”