Tuesday members of the community of the Picayune area gathered at the site of a new building being constructed along Wildwood Drive.

Each time a new construction site pops up in our area, Pearl River County residents can’t help but wonder what type of new business will eventually occupy that location.

Could it be a new store offering wares we can’t currently find in town? Might it be a medical facility, or maybe it’s a place for families to live?

This time the facility under construction will offer assisted living services that are said to be as close to a “home” setting as possible. While this is good news for our senior citizens, what this means to our community is the potential for job opportunities. The jobs that will be offered at this business will be in the form of certified nursing assistants. When it’s complete in March, the new business will provide 12 more jobs to the Picayune area.

It may not sound like a lot, but it’s a dozen more jobs than were locally available before.

And with new construction is the creation of jobs while that work is underway. Once that work is complete then the facility will support the tax base in one form or another and opportunities for local repair companies to secure maintenance agreements.

This development is a sign that businesses small and large are looking at our corner of South Mississippi as a viable place to not only expand their business, but also invest by constructing a new facility. As such, we should continue to put our best foot forward by picking up our trash when it falls to the parking lot, avoiding the urge to throw trash out of our vehicles onto the roadside, leaving cups and other debris in the beds of pickup trucks for the wind to eventually discard and tending to the beauty of our properties as a whole.

That way, when other companies do stop in to finalize their decision, they won’t be deterred.