What helps fuel Olive Branch's spectacular
growth is its locale, or as town booster Bill Cruthirds puts it:
"location, location, location." Cruthirds said Olive
Branch, the fastest growing town in America among towns its size, has all
the benefits of a big city, but without urban problems.
"We're closer to Memphis International
Airport than half the people in Memphis," said Cruthirds, director of Old
Towne, a preservation district that has become a center for antique and
gift shops.
"We're tickled to be this close to
Memphis. We have professional theater, professional sports, the airport .
. . anything that a major metropolitan area has. "But we can go back home
without the hassles and disadvantages of the area."
Embodying that viewpoint is the slogan
Cruthirds helped craft for an Old Towne sign: "Two miles and 100 years
from Memphis." The town grew from 3,567 residents in 1990 to
21,054 in 2000. The estimated population as of last year was 31,359.
Cruthirds, 66, said he wished the growth would stop. "We want people to
visit, but then we wish they would go home."
There is one benefit from the expanding
population, Cruthirds said. The new residents seem more interested in Old
Towne, an area where the character of a century-old Mississippi township
has been preserved.
"People who have lived here all their
lives don't care about it and are not as supportive of it," Curthirds
said. "They think of them as just old buildings. They
don't see it as a link to life from before."
Mark Bailey, 20, a college student and
waiter, moved to Olive Branch from Memphis. Bailey described Olive Branch
as comfortable, but not all that interesting. He said the schools there
are "great."
His family moved to Olive Branch to get
away from crime, Bailey said. He also said it is easy to know
people and make friends in Olive Branch. "Everybody's a lot nicer
down here," he said. The expanding population
doesn't disturb Bailey. Olive Branch is growing, he said, but the town
still retains a "down-home atmosphere."
Dan Williams, 56, a builder and a
lifelong Olive Branch resident, said the population growth has been good
for business. "But I haven't needed it. There used to be five builders and
now we have 200. I used to know them all. If I was busy, I could send
people to someone else who I trusted.
"I don't know them now. I'm a
small-town guy. I built houses for people, and years later, their kids
have me build a house for them."
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