It's been a fairly steady business. The agency still does business with people who first purchased policies from Smith 43 years ago, he says. While his accounts cluster in the Williamsburg area, he has customers as far away as Westfield. One advantage to the slow economic growth that's marked this area, Smith notes, is that any downturn should be slight, compared to places like Boston. I see a very positive future.
People work hard and when they want something, they save up and buy it.
The ice outside, across this section of Route 9, caps the flowing Mill River. You can hear its waters from the doorstep of Gregory Conz's Williamsburg Pharmacy, a place that will soon reach for a bigger market. Conz said the business has grown consistently since he opened it in the mid-1980s, after a marketing survey told him Williamsburg needed a drug store. Sales of prescriptions are up nationwide, he says, in part because of the aging of the country's population. Conz was working as an engineer when he launched the business by buying the building it occupies.