Hairdresser Finds New Roots in Ninth Ward

Hairdresser finds new roots in Ninth Ward

by Greg LaRose
April 21, 2008

Just after lunch on Friday, March 28, as Phillena Carradine trudged back into the offices of Idea Village on Camp Street, she felt emotionally and physically spent. 

She’d spent most of the week there pitching her plan to open a hair salon in the Ninth Ward and creating a business plan with student volunteers from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

Her lunch hour from her job with The Road Home was already running long when an Idea Village representative told her she’d have to rework the budget plans for her salon.

“It was such a long week,” Carradine said. “I couldn’t believe I had more to do.” 

Knowing she had to finish her workday, Carradine told Daryn Dodson of the Idea Village that she couldn’t stay for more than 30 minutes. She begrudgingly made her way upstairs to the Idea Village conference room to rejoin the Stanford students.

Carradine’s salon idea, Reflections of Beauty, was among four business proposals Idea Village, an entrepreneurial networking collaborative, was considering as a first-floor tenant at its satellite business innovation center planned at North Galvez and Piety streets in the Ninth Ward.

In addition to not having to pay the first year’s rent, the winner would receive a $28,000 grant for equipment, supplies, staffing and professional support from Idea Village. 

Other contenders included a family venture that combined a cell phone and children’s clothing store with a bill-paying center. A high-end clothing store and an allied health-training center also were proposed for the location.

Carradine, who lost her Mid-City home in Hurricane Katrina, was confident her salon would thrive. Confident enough to turn down job offers from salons in Dallas, to which she had evacuated. Confident enough to return to the Ninth Ward, where floodwaters obliterated block after block of homes. 

“It’s home,” she said. “I knew the people would be coming back. You have people there who’ve never crossed the (Industrial Canal) bridge their whole lives.”

It was also home to her customers. Returning from Dallas, Carradine reconnected with more than 200 clients who would visit her home for hair care after hours and on weekends. Where there were 20 salons in the neighborhood pre-Katrina, only five have reopened. 

At the top of the stairs, she turned into the conference room. She was expecting to crunch numbers again after a week of crafting her business plan. Inside the room were the 14 Stanford students, most of them beaming.

After they told Carradine she would be the anchor tenant for the Upper Ninth Ward center, emotions overtook her. 

“Thank you so much for believing in me,” she told the students, tears revealing the strain not only of the week but of 2 1/2 years of a lifelong dream put on hold.

Reflections of Beauty is expected to open by the early third quarter. Volunteers with Habitat for Humanity will rehabilitate the former Galvez Pharmacy, which still bears scars from pre- and post-Katrina neglect. 

Despite its lack of aesthetic appeal, the storefront drew a group of seven neighborhood habitués who spent a recent Saturday morning sitting on milk crates, sipping their morning beverages of choice and shouting greetings to neighbors as they came in and out of the convenience store across the street and a catty-corner seafood restaurant.

The ant pile of activity in the midst of an area still in storm shambles is no surprise to Carradine, who expects her outlet to be a neighborhood magnet. 

“People are always around there. They’re coming back.”

The social hub aspect of the hair salon was a major reason the Idea Village panel backed Carradine’s enterprise. 

“She’s an entrepreneur who can create social and economic change in the area,” said Miji Park, who organized the North Galvez Business Innovation Center effort as director of innovative spaces for Idea Village. “She’s going to be a role model for other entrepreneurs who want to start a business in the area.”

Katherine Prevost, president of the Bunny Friend Neighborhood Association, was on the panel that considered the entrepreneurial pitches made to Idea Village. A displaced Ninth Ward denizen who never questioned returning to the city, Prevost said Carradine’s business will attract many residents from throughout the city. 

She’ll also provide jobs. Her startup plans call for three salon workers, but the space will allow her to expand to eight stations.

Reflections of Beauty will be only the first business to directly benefit from the Idea Village at North Galvez Business Innovation Center. Upstairs from the salon will be a workspace for entrepreneurs to find services ranging from financial guidance to legal advice. Idea Village has matched a $50,000 grant from Stanford to create a $100,000 “Pay It Forward Fund” for other Ninth Ward startups, with the hope Carradine and others will contribute once their businesses are viable. 

Erik Bengtsson, one of the Stanford students who worked with Carradine (and a Ben Franklin High School alumnus), said the impact she will have in the Ninth Ward will go far beyond financial rewards.

“She’s driven by this sense of wanting people to feel good,” Bengtsson said. “We see her as a warm presence in the neighborhood.”•