BROOKVILLE — Planning commission approved a special use application from Angela and Ryan Chalfant for the operation of a hair salon at 212 Johnsville-Brookville Road.

“The applicants intend to build a new home on a vacant lot at 212 Johnsville-Brookville Road,” Brookville Law Director Rod Stephan said.

“Upon construction of the new home at 212 Johnsville-Brookville Road, the applicants are requesting to operate a home hair salon,” Stephan continued.

Stephan noted the property is zoned R-1B ( Urban Residential).

Stephan also noted home occupations are special use under 1163.03(b)(24) for residential districts.

“The salon will be small. It will have one chair. My wife will be the only one operating out of it,” Chalfant said.

“It would just be her clientele she is working with now and maybe customers who hear about the salon by word of mouth,” Chalfant continued.

Brookville Mayor Chuck Letner voiced concerns with the driveway.

“Are you going to have a turn around in your driveway?” Letner asked.

“The preliminary thought there was we would have a wider driveway up toward the garage and where the salon side is there will actually be standard-sized parking spots to people can pull in and then be able to back in the driveway and pull out head on so they wouldn’t have to back onto Johnsville-Brookville Road,” Chalfant replied.

“There’s some traffic on that road and we want to make it as safe as possible exiting the driveway,” Chalfant continued.

Stephan said he believes the Chalfants put significant thought into creating a workable design for the hair salon.

“I think they put a lot of effort into the design to make this work in terms of the driveway, the availability for cars to properly park there. It’s not sticking out as an obvious business with the way it’s designed,” Stephan said.

“One of the things we tried to do when we were putting together this design is we worked with our builder to try to make this look as nice as we possibly could for the area,” Chalfant said.

“We understand that the little housing area across the street is beautiful and we love that about it, so we wanted to enhance that area as well with what we were doing,” Chalfant continued.

“We also wanted to give zero clue there’s a business there. We wanted to make it look like a nice house as you are passing by it,” Chalfant added.

Reach Terry Baver at [email protected].