Dirt 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.