The latest makeover in Jefferson City's budding "Midtown" area was done by a professional.
Ali Berhorst opened Midtown Salon on April 2 - and she gave the building at 907 W. McCarty St. that has housed several salons over the years a new look of its own.
"It was a building that had a good core but needed a face-lift," Berhorst said. "We really expanded this building, too. We made the salon part bigger than what it was because we knocked down a wall here and opened it up."
With a reconfigured salon space, new lighting, new paint inside and out, and so forth, Midtown Salon is up and running with Berhorst and four other stylists offering basic hair care services.
In addition to haircuts, waxing, keratin treatments and special occasion hair, clients can also step up to Midtown Salon's "color bar" to watch their stylist customize a "color cocktail" just for them.
"We mix it up on the counter so you can see what we're doing," Berhorst said. "It is neat because your clients get to see that it's not just 'I'm mixing brown and red together' - you have to do the scientific part of it. It kind of personalizes every color we do."
That personalization is at the heart of what the salon does.
"We're just good at giving good hair," Berhorst said. "We're good at customizing the right color and the right cut for the face shape, skin tone, all of that."
The salon also sells Aquage and Amica products.
While this is Berhorst's first time operating a booth-rental salon herself, she knows what it takes to run a business.
"My family had businesses in town, so I knew that it took a little extra work to own something yourself," she said.
Her grandparents, Marvin and Bernice Kaiser, owned Kaiser's Jewelry in downtown Jefferson City; and her aunts owned Jack and Jill, a children's clothing store once located downtown.
Midtown Salon joins other recent business developments sprucing up the area just northwest of downtown Jefferson City. Theo's Midtown, a restaurant serving Greek-style pizza and other fare, opened up the road on West McCarty Street in early 2018. And the Christiansen family has been redeveloping the old JCD Furniture building at 627 W. McCarty St., with plans announced last month for a Big Whiskey's American Restaurant & Bar to open there.
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