Heads-up for regulars

A popular barber and a print shop have relocated because of plans to renovate a three-story building in downtown Spokane.

Betty Brown ran the Lincoln Barber Shop in the Lincoln Building, on the northeast corner of Lincoln and Riverside, for 22 years. Then she moved to the Grant Building, just next door to the east, where she remained for five years.

This week, she reopened her barber shop, using the slogan: “Emancipate your head!” and playing off President Abraham Lincoln, in the skywalk level of the Washington Mutual Building, just across Howard Street from Rite Aid.

The Minuteman Press, a print shop which had been next door at 806 W. Riverside for 10 years, planned a move to the Peyton Building on North Post by Wednesday, said Jim Myklebust, the business’s managing partner.

The two businesses follow the departure of Mark Shockman’s All About Fitness, which moved from the building this summer to a new space on North Browne in Havermale Park.

The departures were needed to make way for a complete gutting of the 40,000-square-foot building’s interior, said David Peterson, vice president of G&B Real Estate Services, a division of Red Lion Hotels Corp., which owns the Grant and Lincoln buildings.

In March, G&B announced an $8 million makeover of the Lincoln, to create a more welcoming plaza at the ground level, room for retail storefronts, and an updating of some of the interior. Now G&B said it also plans to completely redo the Grant Building, creating updated retail and office space.

“We had to remove all the tenants because we’re doing such an in-depth demolition on the inside,” Peterson said. Construction will begin this month and should be complete by early next year, he said. “Downtown is on the move, and it’s exciting. There’s a lot of outside investors looking at investing in our community because of what they see.”

Brown didn’t seem to miss a beat as friends, families and clients chipped in to help her move. A client who also manages commercial property downtown for Kiemle and Hagood helped her find the new space. And two friends who have horse trailers moved her equipment.

“It looked like a round-up on Riverside,” she said with a laugh, adding seriously, “I don’t know what I’d do without my friends.”