DeRidder
– It is seldom that a small town in Louisiana is ever first in
anything positive, but that’s exactly what DeRidder is – home to the
state’s first Tractor Supply Co.
The company is building its first
Louisiana store in DeRidder. Site work is now under way, with the doors
expected to open for business in May.
Company spokesman Susan Morgenstern
said the DeRidder store will be roughly 20,000 square feet with extra
space outside for farm and ranch supplies.
Tractor Supply is a national retail
farm and ranch store brand. It was established in 1938 as a mail-order
business for tractor parts for farmers. The company now has 658 stores
in 37 states and 37 in Canada.
The DeRidder store is being built
off North Pine Street. It will employ 12-14 employees, with some of them
having farming, ranching, welding and livestock backgrounds and
experience.
“We want these team members in our
stores so they can offer expert advice on those topics,” Morgenstern
said. “Our customers are people who live outside the big city, and
have land, animals and property to take care of.”
Tractor Supply is a publicly traded
company head-quartered in Brentwood, Tenn.
The store is stocked with clothing,
horse and pet supplies, tractor/trailer parts and accessories, lawn and
garden supplies, riding mowers, welding machines and pump supplies, and
power tools.
Other businesses
Just a block to the south,
site work on the new Walgreens is nearing completion. The 14,800
square-foot store is expected to open in June. It is also being built
off North Pine Street on the site of the old Red Carpet Inn.
Walgreens spokesman Carol Hively
said the new store will employ 25 people, will feature a drive-through
pharmacy and one-hour photo processing.
Walgreens is the nations largest
drugstore chain.
Mike Smith, president of the Greater
Beauregard Chamber of Commerce, said he’s pleased to see the larger
chain stores coming to DeRidder. He said he’s been writing a national
grocery chain for five years in an effort to get it to open a store in
DeRidder.
“We are going to have at least 100
people working in new jobs in 2007,” he said. “That is going to make
a big impact on our economy.”
Changes in the city
Smith
said he believes now that DeRidder stores and restaurants are selling
and serving alcohol, it is opening up a new level of commerce.
“Alcohol has certainly made
DeRidder more attractive to chain restaurants,” he said. “DeRidder
is poised for growth, and we are going to see that for at least the next
two years.”
Smith also attributes the upswing to
an influx of people with different views and attitudes.
“DeRidder really is a melting pot
of people, and DeRidder looks good to them,” he said. “There are
certain things these new people want and they are willing to work to get
them here.”
Another factor may be Mayor Ron
Roberts, who took office in July.
“I wasn’t sure about him at
first, but I have had a chance to work with and he is a go-getter,”
Smith said of the new mayor. “Not only will the city grow, but we’ll
see parish expansion.”
Also, the city will see the
construction of two new hotels – both off North Pine Street. In June,
the City Council cleared the way for construction of a $3 million,
50-room Best Western by Sugar Land, Texas-based Pramukh Hospitalities.
The hotel is expected to be completed by late summer or early fall.
Land for a second hotel, reportedly
a Days Inn, has been cleared and site preparation is now under way,
Roberts said.
He said he has yet to get firm
details on the project.
A $28 million refinery expansion
project at the MeadWestvaco plant is already under way. It will be
completed in 2008.
The expansion means the DeRidder
plant will be one of the world’s largest and most competitive tall-oil
refineries.
Nearly 200 people work at the
refinery, which refines tall oil into a variety of specialized products,
including printing ink resins and asphalt additives.
Roberts is “mildly optimistic of
the growth,” he said. “We are talking to other companies, including
food franchises, and see what is happening as a good thing.”
The mayor said both the city and the
parish have done well in the months following Hurricane Rita.
Stine Lumber is expected to undergo
an expansion and Pizza Hut is building a new larger store.
Roberts said Sonoco, a company that
manufactures the large cores for rolls of newsprint produced by Boise,
is expected to begin operations in DeRidder in January. He said the
company will be located in a warehouse near the city’s Northside
Industrial Park off North Pine Street.
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