Owner wants to keep 50-year Hamilton business 'an old-fashioned barber shop, in a new building'

The Hamilton West Barber Shop, where hair has been cut for more than 50 years, received permission Monday to move into a former Chevron gas station just up the road.

The Hamilton Planning Commission on Monday voted 5-0 to allow a zoning change that will permit the barber shop to occupy the other property. The barber shop for its whole existence has operated in the Hamilton West Shopping Center.

Barber shop owner Ryan Haynes said he isn’t sure when the move will happen to the new location.

“We’ve got some contractors lined up, but I don’t have a move-in date as of yet,” Haynes said.

“It’ll be a four-chair barber shop similar to what we have, kind of going with a garage theme,” with barbers working from tool boxes, to reflect the building’s gas-station history.

“We’re going to put an all-glass garage door on it, kind-of as our storefront window that’ll be able to open up when the weather’s ideal,” Haynes said. “Besides that, it’ll be an old-fashioned barber shop, in a new building.”

The move ultimately will be made necessary because Construction Design Management of Bowling Green, Ky., has purchased the shopping center property and plans to redevelop it into a new entity, featuring mini warehouses with self-storage units, improved parking lots, two proposed commercial buildings with retail on the ground floor, offices on the second, and potentially condominiums on the third story, a drive-thru restaurant and a full-service car wash.

The property’s new owner, Luke Williams of Construction Design Management, told this media outlet in November the company would begin construction this spring to convert the shopping center into a new entity.

The company already had made temporary fixes to its parking lot with many holes. The company bought the 27.3-acre property for $2.3 million.

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The barber shop opened in the late 1960s, then owned by George Martin, according to Steve Mallicote, who started working there in 1968 and became the owner in 1973, leading it for many years until Haynes took over.

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