Its Main Street neighbors include a saloon, a salon and lawyers' offices. In reality, downtown is the calm at the eye of this Warren County city's hurricane of new homes, new businesses, new people. In the past decade, the city that gobbled large chunks of Deerfield Township has increased its territory 50 percent, to 18 square miles. Pharmacist Richard Yost's business in downtown Mason has benefitted from new development. The growth here, while impressive to newcomers, has come at a price.
Schools bulge with new students, affordable housing is hard to find and traffic is everywhere.
At the center of it all, Richard Yost dispenses pills and potions from his drugstore as his family has done for more than half a century. He has a little more traffic to fight on the drive home, but he has no complaints about Mason's growth. While neighboring cities such as Lebanon struggle to reconcile progress with their past, in Mason long-timers and young families alike are content with the direction their city has taken. But it doesn't bother me much. It's still a nice place to live.