HUNTINGTON – Customers are milling about Rex Frederick’s used bookstore downtown.
It’s been about two weeks since Frederick and his fiancee, Renee Platt, opened Turn the Page. Judging from the half-dozen or so people browsing the shelves, it was time.
Or, maybe timing could have been better.
The Huntington bookstore opened a little more than a week after an announcement the city will lose 700 jobs to Mexico. While Frederick is confident something else will come along to replace those jobs, he said it’s a little worrisome.
“That’s the kind of news you don’t want to hear right away,” he said last week from behind the store’s counter. “You are concerned with the local economy.”
Fewer books bought, fewer heads styled, fewer restaurant meals eaten. That’s the concern among some Huntington residents since United Technologies Corp. announced last month it will cut the jobs within the next two years. Another 1,400 people the company employs at Carrier in Indianapolis will also lose their jobs to Mexico.