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ROCHESTER – The $1.2 million purchase of a former bank branch seems to have been the first step in launching a new complex of salon studios.
In March, Bandel Investments purchased an empty 3,000-square-foot building at 5600 U.S. Highway 52 North from Sterling State Bank, which operated a branch there for years. It is located along Bandel Road Northwest.
The Pine island-based Bandel Investments started filing building permits this week to convert the 28-year-old ex-bank building into a new salon suites complex.
Salon suites is an operation that provides a collection studios for independent beauty professionals, like hair stylists and nail technicians, to lease and operate their own businesses.
Each studio is its own independent operation with its own name, retail products, prices and hours.
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The salon suites concept was first introduced to Rochester in 2013 , when a Sola Salon Studios franchiose opened in the Shoppes on Maine area by Apollo Liquor and the former Schneiderman's Furniture /Best Buy building. Since then, two other Sola locations have popped up in the Med City at 3185 41st Street NW and at 1201 S. Broadway in the Crossroads Shopping Center .
This project is not connected to the Sola Salon brand.
Getting into the beauty industry will be a major change for the nondescript Bandel Road building.
The complex's only brush with frame happened in December 2015, when it was robbed two days in a row. The would-be bank robber ran in front of a KIMT-TV reporter filming a story about the previous robbery. Rochester police caught the bank robber.
Jeff Kiger tracks business action in Rochester and southeastern Minnesota every day in "Heard on the Street." Send tips to jkiger@postbulletin.com or via Twitter to @whereskiger . You can call him at 507-285-7798.
