By By JONATHAN CLAYBORNE
Staff Writer
CHOCOWINITY — Long gone are the days when Chocowinity residents had to drive into Washington to visit a pharmacy or buy groceries.
“We finally got a doctor, we got a drug store, we got a Food Lion,” said Terry Andrews, owner of Terry’s Place, a gift store on N.C. Highway 33.
Andrews lived in this town for 32 years. The expansion of U.S. Highway 17 took her house, and she now lives in Washington.
On Tuesday, Andrews ticked off a list of stores and housing developments that have helped fuel, or have been fueled by, Chocowinity’s growth over the years.
“Cypress Landing has really helped our community,” she said of the residential development east of town.
Andrews said she gets lots of customers headed in and out of a couple of area campgrounds, including Twin Lakes, located off Whichard’s Beach Road.
“They’re some of my best customers,” she said of the campers.
Andrews, who has been in business here for 11 years, also noted that Chocowinity is suffering as much as many other locales as the United States staggers toward economic recovery.
“This year and a half has been rough,” she said. “It’s like anybody else. Retail’s down.”
At a shop a couple of doors east, Brenda Anderson, owner of Brenda’s Florist, said the town lost a hardware store but gained a home-and-garden shop.
As one store fails, another one comes in to take its place, following the normal birth-and-death cycles of business, Anderson agreed.
But, she continued, “The town, growing? Not right now. I don’t see it. Not with the economy like it is.”
Anderson said she is trying to make ends meet. A resident of Chocowinity for 35 years, she has been in business since 2000.
“Starting a florist from scratch is very hard to do,” she said, adding that Chocowinity has no funeral homes and one nursing home.
Yet, “I enjoy my Family Dollar store and not having to go to town to get what I need,” she added.
Despite the hard times, Chocowinity is enjoying growth and is poised to take advantage of more, according to Mayor Jimmy Mobley.
“We’re already getting inquiries about new businesses coming,” Mobley said recently.
One of those businesses, a small one, will be announced in January, he said.
Mobley said the town has received a building-plot plan submitted by the business, but that the plan hasn’t been approved.
“But it is coming,” he said.
U.S. 17 looms large in the town’s future, the mayor suggested.
“I grew up in Chocowinity, been here all my life,” Mobley commented. “In fact, I can remember when Highway 17, now in front of the Town Hall, was just a two-lane road.”
Because of its proximity to the under-construction U.S. Highway 17 bypass, Chocowinity could reap benefits from commercial enterprises opening up near the highway, Mobley indicated.
“Where it’s located, where we’re situated, it’s going to help us,” he said.
Construction work on the bypass did lead to some decline in business within the highway corridor, according to one local business owner.
“I think that prior to the bypass thing starting … everything on this end of town was really growing really quickly,” said Neal O’Neal, owner of Chocowinity Pharmacy. “And that seems to have slowed down.”
But the pharmacy is holding its own and, now that traffic patterns have been established and “people are getting used to what’s being done, it seems like things are starting to pick back up,” O’Neal said.
The town’s medical community has grown by leaps and bounds.
Chocowinity now has two physicians and a nurse practitioner, O’Neal related.
Since 1996, the town has become host to the pharmacy, a dentist, a chiropractor, a shopping center, housing developments and much else besides, the mayor said.
A couple of weeks ago, town officials met with representatives of the U.S. Department of Agriculture to discuss expanding the municipal sewer system, the mayor reported.
The town already has put $5 million into the expansion of its water system “just to keep up” with demand, he said.
“The growth is coming, and the town board that we’ve got now is trying to stay ahead of the curve,” he said.
Mobley acknowledged that Chocowinity is, in part, a bedroom community for the nearby college town of Greenville. Yet, other things are driving progress in town, he asserted.
Until the economic downturn, two major companies were eying the town’s industrial park for manufacturing operations, and at least one company still is considering that location, he said.
“Honestly, we’re growing, and we’ve been fortunate,” Mobley stated.
Said O’Neal, “We welcome any growth we can get, but I’ve been pleased just to kind of stay where we are, stay busy, I guess, and not lose a whole lot with all of the construction and the economic downturn.”