MAGAZINES 
Boulder Magazine, Summer 2011
Biz Spotlight
On Broadway’s Off-Broadway Revival
by Charmaine Ortega Getz
On Broadway Hair Studio & The Boulder Spa. Photo by Charmaine Ortega Getz
The frst thing you might notice about Boulder’s On Broadway Hair Studio & The Boulder Spa is that it’s located about three-quarters of a mile west of Broadway—at 380 Arapahoe Ave.
“We were the On Broadway Hair Studio 30 years ago on Broadway,” says David Martinez, who was then the solo owner. “My staff convinced me to keep the name when we moved 15 years ago.”
The next prominent feature is that the salon and spa are smack in an otherwise residential neighborhood. But once you cross the threshold into an elegant interior, it’s what you don’t notice that’s striking. Together with celebrity gossip magazines and roaring hair dryers, harsh-smelling chemicals have long been a part of many beauty salons. Not here.
“We are the oldest operating Aveda salon, next to the original in Minneapolis,” Martinez says. Many salons today prominently advertise their use of the pioneering, ecologically conscious Aveda beauty product line, but Martinez says he’s been on board since it was introduced in 1978. He believes in nurturing the environment as much as the clientele, a concept that extends to the spa side of the services—massages, aromatherapy, waxing, facials, body wraps and more. Despite all the attention to making the body beautiful, “This is not a narcissistic approach,” Martinez says. Call it a holistic or wellness approach. Aveda products don’t rely on eco-iffy ingredients. But they do aim to improve more than appearance—not only to clear up troubled skin, for instance, but help remedy the root causes. When clients arrive for appointments, they’re asked about their general health and emotional state so that treatments will be specific to the person in that moment.
Photo courtesy www.boulderspa.com
On Broadway holds spa “wellness hours” four times a week. They’re something like a restaurant’s happy hour, with 20 percent discounts on most spa services instead of on drinks and food. Martinez’s business partner, Joy Lanzano, helped dream that up as an alternative to simply cutting prices. “We want to be conscious about what affects our clients’ decisions in a trying economy,” she says.
Listening to the Universe
About six years ago, Lanzano was simply a regular patron. As often happens in the stylist-customer relationship, Martinez got to know her well. In 2000, Lanzano’s success as a designer of instructional materials for the aviation industry was challenged by divorce, single parenthood and a lot of stress. After being injured in a car accident, she was forced to agree with her doctor’s candid opinion that “the universe was trying to tell [her] something.” While on medical leave to figure out what that was, she confided to Martinez that she “didn’t want a nanny raising my son,” and he suggested that she buy into a business—his salon and spa.
After a trial run at management, Lanzano decided the career switch was doable. “We upgraded the computers and the inventory, and basically remodeled the [operating] systems,” she says. The partners’ synergy of different strengths hinges on a belief that their enterprise is more than about profit. Hence the eco-friendly products and the regular donations to “more than 30” local good causes, such as Boulder County Safehouse for Progressive Nonviolence and Blue Sky Bridge, Lanzano says.
The local angle matters to these longtime residents. Lanzano was a high school science teacher in the Boulder Valley School District before embarking on her 18-year design career. Martinez saw a future in living in Boulder when he first arrived in 1969, but not as the “starving musician” he was then. He switched to hairstyling—a much steadier gig—and opened his own business three years later. Keeping his eye on the horizon, he “foresaw spa services becoming more popular, and looked for a bigger space on Broadway,” he says. “I looked for seven years and had my eye on an old mansion, but the restrictions of a historic building were just too much.”
Co-owners Joy Lanzano (left) and David Martinez run the second-oldest Aveda salon in the country. The hair studio and spa—Boulder’s first—offers a full spectrum of services in a nurturing environment that includes a tree-shaded courtyard (below). Photos by Charmaine Ortega Getz
Martinez cast his net wider and finally caught a far-different historic building: the former Steele’s Super, a small meat market on the corner of Arapahoe and Fourth Street, circa 1938. As an old photo at the Carnegie Branch Library for Local History shows, it looked like an aging convenience store surrounded by oil-stained concrete. “It was absolutely gnarly,” Martinez says.
But then, any gifted hairstylist can see past a less-than-perfect first impression.
While the city of Boulder allowed the commercial building to remain grandfathered into an otherwise residential zone, the new owner was not allowed to add a single square foot. Martinez kept the vaguely Hispano-style scallop-topped facade in a design that he “basically sketched on a napkin” for architect Catherine Rahn. Most interior walls were removed, along with the old meat locker, which increased the practical usefulness of the building’s 2,598 square feet. The surrounding concrete was softened with a sidewalk, a parking circle, and a tree-shaded courtyard dotted with sculptures. Adobe-like walls, water-thrifty landscaping and low-key signage help the business blend into the historic neighborhood.
Photo by Charmaine Ortega Getz
Once the only spa in town, On Broadway stays unique by keeping its signature personal attention tuned to new trends and needs. “We were ahead of the curve on offering mineral-based makeup, which is very big now,” Lanzano says. “And our spa care for guys. There’s a growing acceptance for men to get facials and waxing, and we see those services expanding.”
As everyone in the salon and spa industry knows, the success of any makeover depends on being refreshed with timely updates.
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