Formerly Gene’s Heartland Foods, G & W Foods continued its Grand Opening weeks with a ribbon-cutting ceremony Friday afternoon, despite being delayed briefly when power in the store and the neighborhood went out.

“The store looks fabulous,” Chamber of Commerce executive director Lindsay Madison said. “So thank you already for your investment in the community. We are very excited.”

Chris O’Hara said this is the 24^th G & W Foods branch and the 10^th in Kansas, with others located in Arkansas and Missouri. O’Hara said they are appreciative of the “wide open arms” the community has put forward in welcoming the new store to the area.

O’Hara said most of the employees are the same from when it was Heartlands except for the addition of the new manager, Will Rayburn. Each of the employees introduced themselves as well as noting how long they had been with the store, ranging from a few weeks to 20 years.

“I’m looking forward to a lot of great years here,” Rayburn said.

The store provides United States Department of Agriculture choice beef, a wide variety of organic foods as well as custom meat smoking and cake decorating. Starting next week, store ads will include coupons and fuel gas-savers cards will be available within the next 10 days.

They also have the Partners for Education program which allows customers to give their G & W receipts to their school, who can then return them to the store for one percent of those sales.

“It can be a very good thing for the community,” O’Hara said.

The ribbon-cutting event also included free hot dogs and refreshments for participants. The store continues its training for employees and organization of the store itself.

During the weekly Chamber Coffee, the Fort Scott Family Dental hosts introduced themselves to other business leaders and also gave a vision for their goal in the community.

“It’s a great group of people here at Fort Scott Dental, which makes it worthwhile,” Dr. Tim Crawford said of his team, which has been offering services to Fort Scott for the past four years with Crawford living in the city for the past year.

Crawford said they hope to expand their current building, adding about 800 square feet, in the near future so they can see more patients. They currently offer a variety of services including dental implants, orthodontics, root canals, whitening and extractions.

“There’s very little that you can’t get done in our office,” Crawford said, adding they are always accepting new patients.

Other announcements included:

• G & W Foods will offer free hot dogs and refreshments Friday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. with their ribbon-cutting ceremony at 12:15.
• The third annual Triyakathon will start at 10 a.m. Saturday, with individuals or teams participating in running, kayaking and biking different portions of the trails at Gunn Park.
• The Forks and Corks: Taste of Fort Scott event, to be held Nov. 7, continues to look for live auction items, food vendors who would like to participate and  entries for the salsa contest.
• The Lowell Milken Center’s new building had its final cleaning done Thursday as it officially nears completion. Its doors will not open for a few months still as they now begin placing exhibits.
• The Highlands Apartments will hold an open house Tuesday, 5-8 p.m., welcoming those interested in seeing the apartments.
• Fort Scott’s Halloween Parade will make its way through downtown Oct. 24, with downtown businesses, and even those not located downtown, encouraged to participate.

In their first meeting of the month, the Fort Scott City Commission decided to enter into an agreement with Kansas Fiber Network, allowing the company to lay fiber optic cable through the city to provide internet access for local businesses.

The Kansas-based company with 25 employees and headquartered in Wichita will lay the cable along Indian Road from the west and then north on Horton Street and east on 18^th Street before again running north on Judson Street.

Debbie Edwards, the company’s business development executive, said right now they will not provide their services to residential areas, but instead target customers such as government, education, medical, anchor institutions and similar entities.

The Kansas Fiber Network currently serves more than 400 communities and continues to expand, but without becoming exclusive or impersonal as some other major providers might.

“What I really like…is that we have a really big network but a small-town feel,” Edwards said of the company, which she said is staffed by Kansans.

Fort Scott’s director of information technology Slayden Davis said he has been working with the company over recent months and said he would call their services a “major backbone for our neck of the woods.”

The quorum of commissioners, with Mayor Cindy Bartelsmeyer and commissioner Lucas Cosens absent, approved the agreement unanimously.

The commission also heard a report from Rebecca Brubaker, executive director of the Safehouse Crisis Center in Pittsburg, which provides refuge for battered women who may have suffered from domestic abuse or stalking.

The center serves seven Kansas counties, housing about 40 from Bourbon County each year while serving about 750 in total annually, helping them with immediate needs as well as trying to help them become self-sufficient.

The commission decided to donate $1,000 toward Safehouse’s $1.2 million campaign for a larger facility.

In executive session, the commissioners decided to extend their contract with city manager Dave Martin another five years while also giving him a two percent raise.