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Emily Nobblott rings up a customer at Orange Pharmacy on Main Street in the downtown area. |
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.
Orange's slower pace and easy driving distance to such bigger towns as Charlottesville--which is about a half an hour away--is one of the things that appealed to Seymour and his wife, Mary, who were looking for a good place to raise their sons, Brian, 8, and Mark, 6.
He and Lamar had talked about opening a pharmacy together in the Piedmont region for years, but the timing had never been right. While Lamar worked in the family pharmacy business and became mayor of the Town of Madison, Seymour was working his way up the corporate ladder with CVS and putting in 70 to 80 hours a week.
Finally, Seymour had a midlife crisis.
"Most men go out and buy a sports car," he said. "I decided I wanted to have more time to spend with my family."
After hearing that Grymes had closed, Seymour and Lamar decided the time was right to realize their dream. It didn't hurt that the building at 130 Main St. had just become available for lease, or that Mary Seymour has family in the Orange area.
A few months later, Seymour had quit his job to begin designing Orange Pharmacy and ordering such things as cards, specialty candles and snacks. The new business opened May 25.
"I haven't had this much fun in years," said Seymour, who is enjoying getting to know his customers.
About 42 percent of the nation's 58,109 pharmacies are independently owned, according to the National Community Pharmacists Association in Alexandria. They dispense 1.4 billion prescriptions annually, and they also offer such services as delivery, nutritional counseling and charge accounts.
Seymour, who is the primary pharmacist at Orange Pharmacy, and Lamar, who also works at his family's pharmacies, said they are able to compete with chain drug stores by ordering through EPIC Pharmacy Network and Good Neighbor Pharmacy. And they offer home delivery and will make up special prescriptions and compounds, which most chains won't do.
The pharmacists also are interested in offering diabetes counseling and education on ways to manage asthma, both of which are among the more common health problems they see in the area.
"The most rewarding part of being a pharmacist," Seymour said, "is being able to work with people and see them take responsibility for managing their health problems."
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