How business, doctors and journalists prey on your food anxieties I

Will the cease -ire hold <strong>and</strong> bring peace at last
to Northern Irel<strong>and</strong>? A lot of smart <strong>business</strong> people
are betting hard cash that It wi!I .
Irish renaissance
By Richard C . Morais
You THINK you'Ve got troubles running
a <strong>business</strong>? Listen to the storti, of
Michael McLaughlin, Mho ran a
thriving, 19-emplot~ee hardaare store
on William Street, Londonderry,
Northern Irel<strong>and</strong> . The shop ~eas just
outside the Bog, the Catholic slum
where in 1972 British soldiers shot
dead 13 rioting Catholics on "Black
Sundav ."
McLaughlin's <strong>business</strong> was burned
<strong>and</strong> bombed to the ground eight
times . "He hit a low point in 1975,"
recalls his son Seamus . "He had just
much iaraersmrc ancf are snapoing up
additional buildings on the street that
tine %cars ago uas derelict .
PJul Ferguson rea';ized life had renl-
Iv changed since the cease-fire %siten a
te" %reeks ago his aharm accidentailr
tripped . Police were at the store betiore
lie was . "For 20 \ears police
w'ouldn't iurestigate robberies here
:or ;eur of being set up <strong>and</strong> ambushcd,"
he savs .
E~en before the August 1994
cease-fire beneeen the unionist <strong>and</strong>
been firebombed, <strong>and</strong> m% motherwas nationalist terrorists, Northern Irel<strong>and</strong>'s
econoim' %cas reviNing . This
dying . He reopened in a prefabiicated
office, <strong>and</strong> that t•enday a gunman S20 billion economy grew 3% last
robbed him ." But the McLaughlins vear-not a huge amount, but a%%elconie
change from decades of decline
are still in <strong>business</strong> on William Street
selling hardware .
<strong>and</strong> stagnation .
Next door, the Ferguson hunil}' While politics still dominates the
sells cycling shorts, jeans-<strong>and</strong> T shirts . news from Northcrn Irel<strong>and</strong>, <strong>business</strong>
During the Troubles, sa}s Paul Fcrguson,
"my mother sprinkled the as Catholic locals call Londonderrr, a
is where the quiet action is . In Dern,
shop with holy water ." But with proNinc :al capital of 100,000 just a
peace slowhy settling o% er the en :battled
northern proNinces, tlx Fergu-
Republic ot Irel<strong>and</strong>, titerc's a building
few miles from the border ~~idi the
sons have exp<strong>and</strong>ed into a second, boom . On ecery block, construction
is under wav . Rents Cor prime down-
- toun retail space hare tripled dte last
se~°eral vcars, to S70 a square foot .
-_ "FoYlesidc," aS 120 million mall now
being built bv Boston's O'Connell
Brothers, is alreadv 100% rented .
Tenants include A-ScDonald's, Bod%
Shop, Boots, <strong>and</strong> Marks & Spencer .
Familiar names to mosr, but exotic to
this war-torn rown, long shunned bv
outside imestors . Smiles real estate
agent Patrick Aidrews : "Tluse are ill
stores that «ouldn't ha%e looked at us
pre~iouslv ."
Du Pont was the tow-n's sole big
The McLaugh~in bro .hers today in fron ;of thel, londcrderry hardware store . <strong>and</strong> the store after a 1972 bombing
Bombed <strong>and</strong> burned to the ground eight times, but now exp<strong>and</strong>ing .
2046 M3 0 ry /
'50 Forbes . Aueust 14, 1990
http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/agf97d00/pdf