Solar Nails Salon Fortifies Storefront With Nine Steel Bollards Two Days After Reopening

WAUKESHA — Solar Nails Salon on Northside Drive spent Tuesday afternoon installing a row of nine bright-yellow steel bollards across its parking-lot-facing storefront, two days after reopening behind a sheet of hand-lettered plywood following last Friday's vehicle collision through the salon's front window.

Owner Linh Nguyen, 56, said she began calling contractors Sunday night, before the plywood covering had even gone up, and settled on a company out of Pewaukee that could install the posts within 48 hours. Each bollard is a 6-inch steel pipe filled with concrete, sunk 30 inches into the asphalt, and spaced 14 inches apart along the width of the storefront, a gap Nguyen said the installer told her "a shopping cart could get through, a Honda Civic could not."

The Civic in question struck the salon's display window on Friday, August 8, after its 73-year-old driver reversed toward the building while attempting to park, an incident Waukesha Police attributed to pedal confusion. No one was seriously injured. Police said at the time that the department had no plans to recommend changes to the parking lot's configuration, calling the incident "consistent with typical patterns" for the retail strip.

Not Waiting On The City

Nguyen said she did not ask the city for guidance before ordering the bollards and does not intend to. "I called Waukesha Police Monday to ask if they had any plans," Nguyen said. "They said no. That's when I stopped waiting for someone else's plan."

"A window can be replaced. I have replaced this window once already, four days ago. I am not doing it twice."

— Linh Nguyen, owner, Solar Nails Salon

The city's building inspection division confirmed the bollards were installed without a permit, which a spokesperson said is technically required for any fixed structure altering the parking lot's curb line, but added the department has no plans to pursue enforcement given "the circumstances that prompted the installation." The spokesperson described the posts as "code-adjacent" and said an inspector would likely sign off retroactively if Nguyen submitted paperwork "whenever it's convenient."

The Reopening

The salon reopened Monday as planned, two days ahead of the "up to three weeks" timeline Nguyen had initially been given for full glass replacement, operating behind the plywood sheet an employee had hand-lettered "STILL OPEN (MONDAY) - WALK-INS WELCOME." Nguyen said all nine bollards were installed and painted by 4 p.m. Tuesday, a coincidence of numbering she said she did not notice until a client at drying station four pointed it out.

"Nine appointments got rescheduled Friday, and now there's nine posts," Nguyen said. "I didn't plan that. I'm choosing to take it as a sign that we're square with whatever this was."

Councilman Gary Puchalski, who represents the district, stopped by Tuesday evening to view the installation and offered unsolicited praise, calling it "a genuinely inspiring example of a small business owner taking personal responsibility for infrastructure the city was not going to get to this fiscal year." Nguyen said she thanked him and did not ask him to clarify what he meant by "this fiscal year."

Neighbors Take Notice

Word of the bollards spread quickly along the retail strip. A manager at the neighboring Culver's said two customers asked about them unprompted during Tuesday's dinner rush, and that she has since seen at least one car in the shared lot slow down noticeably before turning, "which has genuinely never happened before, so, good for them, I guess." She said her own store has no plans to install bollards but would "keep an open mind."

Nguyen said the permanent glass replacement is still on order and expected within the original three-week window. She said the bollards are not a substitute for the window but "a second thing, in addition to the window, that I would now also like to have."