It has been a somewhat uneventful past two weeks in the city of Laurinburg since the last column, but there are always things of importance to discuss.

Regarding the shooting at Piggly Wiggly, it was brought to my attention that the article about it in the Fayetteville Observer characterized downtown Laurinburg as a dangerous place, based on comments made to the reporter from an employee at Kimbrell’s Furniture. The employee was reported in the paper as saying he wasn’t surprised by the shooting because “you can hear gun shots in town all the time” and “this used to be a nice neighborhood but now its just drugs and gangs.” The comments bother me for several reasons.

Having lived in downtown Laurinburg for the past 8 years(less than a half mile from the shooting), I have yet to hear a gunshot. I am not going to say that East Church Street has never seen better days, but there are great old houses being beautifully restored in the area and to say that its just gangs and drugs is a gross exaggeration and projects an image of that neighborhood that is simply not true. Characterizing Laurinburg as a dangerous place to live is not supported by the crime statistics either. In the past two years, Laurinburg (population 16,000) has seen six murders, 5 of which were either family members or lovers not getting along. There has been exactly one murder in two years that may have been due to random violence (the case has not been solved as yet, but may turn out to be non-random as well).

What really bothers me about the comments, however, is the tendency of some of us (myself included at times) to talk down about Laurinburg to outsiders. We should not do this, in my view. It makes it harder for the city to grow and harder to attract companies and people to want to come here. Good, hard-working people here are really suffering with the state of the local economy. Does anyone really want to make it harder to improve things than it already is?

On the lighter side, work is progressing nicely on the Lauchwood Drive project. For those of you who are wondering what is going on there, the road is being widened to three lanes, so there will be a turning lane, and sidewalks and lighting are being installed. There will be a traffic circle at the intersection of Johns Road and Lauchwood Drive. For those of you drivers not confident in using a traffic circle, may I suggest you practice up at the one in St Andrews (while the students are on break, please) so you’re ready to go at it full speed ahead once the Lauchwood Circle is done.

On the brighter side, on behalf of the citizens of Laurinburg, I want to congratulate the Scotland County Economic Development Corporation and the economic developer Greg Icard for landing a 2nd company for Scotland County in just the past 3 months, which will bring at least another 25 jobs. These two companies coming and Gojo not closing will have a nice impact on the job situation here. The Golden Knights decision to stay at the Laurinburg-Maxton Airport is great news as well. They not only are a great outfit themselves, but they will continue to help in the economic development going on at the airport. There are other hopeful things on the horizon as well, in the areas of retail and recreation. Laurinburg, like the rest of the state and nation, is definitely going through a tough patch, but I feel very confident that better days are ahead.