Newspaper clips from 20 years ago show advertisements for a variety of businesses and industries that are no longer found locally, including sporting goods stores, movie theatres and jewelers.

This issue is thankfully being fought on multiple fronts, with the various city and county governments doing their best to revitalize the area, the local Chamber of Commerce promoting as much local business as possible and the Development Authority actively recruiting new industry.

And it looks like their efforts are paying off, slowly to be sure, but they are paying off.

With that in mind, what would we like to see return to the Valley? What businesses would we be willing to support if they opened up here?

Would we like more variety in our big box stores, like say a Target coming in? Or do we instead want to see more specialty stores pop up?

This is a question that must be answered before any new business opens. It takes courage and faith to open up your own business. If we do not show them support then why bother with the effort?

It just may be that we are happy traveling anywhere between 15 minutes to an hour to shop and entertain ourselves.

But in all likelihood, we would prefer to keep everything local as much as possible.