Emily Nobblott rings up a customer at Orange Pharmacy on Main Street in the downtown area. REBECCA SELL/THE FREE LANCE-STAR Visit the Photo Place

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Pair open independent drug store

Two pharmacists open Orange Pharmacy in downtown Orange after Grymes Drug Store closes.

Date published: 7/21/2005

By CATHY JETT

By CATHY JETT

Willie Lamar sensed opportunity when Grymes Drug Store closed in the town of Orange.

Owner Bill Morris had sold the downtown landmark to CVS in November, leaving Orange without a drug store on Main Street for the first time in decades.

"I was rather surprised to hear it [closed] because all the indications I had were that it was doing well," Lamar said.

The pharmacist, whose family owns drug stores in Charlottesville and Green and Madison counties, figured some longtime Grymes customers would like to continue dealing with an independent drug store downtown. CVS is currently in Orange Village Shopping Center.

"We thought the people of Orange needed another choice," said Lamar, noting that some former Grymes customers were driving as far as Gordonsville, Culpeper or Charlottesville to shop at independent drug stores.

So Lamar and John Seymour, a longtime friend and former Medical College of Virginia classmate, recently opened Orange Pharmacy at 130 Main St. It's near the building Grymes moved into about 10 years ago, and is in the pharmacy's original location.

"It's good for the economy, it's good for competition when people have choices," said Seymour, who quit a management job in Rhode Island with a national drug-store chain to become the main pharmacist at Orange Pharmacy.

Jay Harrison, executive director of Orange Downtown Alliance, said townspeople are "very excited about having them downtown. We have a lack of retail downtown, and more retail encourages multiple foot traffic between businesses."

Spring Meadow Gift Shop, which had been located in the building where Orange Pharmacy is now, closed in part because fewer people shopped downtown after Grymes closed, he said.

Downtown business took a further hit when Orange County bought the Grymes Drug Store building for office space, a move that caused an uproar in Orange.

"We could have easily filled that building with retail opportunities," Harrison said. "We had at least one that was pretty definite."

But he said he isn't angry with the county because it is likely to outgrow that space in a few years, and the building may go back on the market.

"Maybe we'll be able to get that space back into the private sector," Harrison said.

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Date published: 7/21/2005