Fire ravages downtown businesses

(A note from publisher Richard Lamb following the February 12 fire which destroyed the Advance building)

The first thing readers should know is that The Advance will go on. We will continue publish a newspaper, continuing the tradition started by Fredrick Denny Larke in 1878.(The newspaper was in fact published on time that week.)

In many ways the way the fire wiped us clean is the way we wipe the pages clean each week. Each week we start with blank pages and fill them up. We are really good at that.

Now we must do that with the entire business, not just the black pages. But the good thing is we have a loyal advertiser base and a loyal group of readers. Between the two newspapers of Presque Isle Newspapers, we sell a weekly newspaper to more than 90 percent of all of the households in the county, giving our ad

vertisers the best bang for their advertising buck. We intend to honor that loyalty by continuing to publish all the local news, including the news about our businss and our neighbors as we struggle through this difficult time. Our telephone number will remain 734-2105. Our temporary office will be in the photo studio next to J and L Camera and Electronics on Erie Street.

We plan on rebuilding the newspaper at the corner of Third and Erie so we can continue to say we are on one of the four corners of the only stoplight in the county. As we go through this transition, we ask for your patience and our patronage.

Richard Lamb, Editor and Publisher