Fort Scott Barber Shop at 118 E. Wall is owned and operated by the Montanez family. They were winners of multiple awards including Best Barbershop in the Midwest when they had their business in the Kansas City area.
They moved to Fort Scott in 2021 and started a new barber shop in the historic downtown district, across from the Fort Scott National Historic Site.
A dispute with the City of Fort Scott over the safety of the historic building closed the business almost a year ago, ownerJose Montanez said.
“I am not wanting to fight with the city,” Montanez said in an interview with fortscott.biz when contacted about the business being closed for almost a year. “I just want to open my business.”
It’s been over a month since the city took down the street barriers on Wall Street.
“A lot has been said at the city commission meetings, but when I ask to sit down and talk, nobody wants it,” he said.
The work on the facade of the building has been completed, which the city had some concerns with.
“It took some time to get a reputable business to take on the project,” Montanez said. “We had a structural engineer come in who certified it wasn’t a structural wall, just the facade of the building needed to be fixed.”
“So we proceeded to replace the bricks on the facade, and the city inspector came in to give final approval. For some reason, he was stripped of his power to give final approval on this specific project, unlike any other project,” Montanez said.
“Ever since then, we have been going back and forth. For some reason we haven’t been able to open our business back up, even though it’s fixed,” he said.”The street has been reopened, which tells us the city feels safe. If they felt it was a hazard to the community they wouldn’t have opened the street back up.”
“It’s sad for us. We see many businesses closing and we want to stay,” he said. “It’s been a heavy burden.”
“The City brought its own private engineer which could not write a report as requested from the City and ended up quitting after fully inspecting the inside and outside of the property and charged no fees due to his ‘inability’ to write a report,” Montanez said.
“We fixed the facade, at this point they want to do an inspection on the whole building,” Montanez said. “It’s been a month and a half since the barriers were taken down. A dumpster has been placed in front of the building to make it look like they are keeping the public safe.”
The family of three barbers have been working in other studios and salons to make ends meet, he said.
“We want to open up the building, we want to show we are wanting to stay,” he said.
To view the story on the opening of the business: