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Demoress Traylor, a 23-year-old from Jackson, Mississippi, stopped by Signature Cutz on his way to Home Depot.

(Casey Parks/The Oregonian)

Inside her barber shop, Angel Bagley could almost believe gentrification didn't exist, that the soul of Portland’s African-American community hasn’t moved away from Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard. Bagley’s days are dense with activity, with customers and friends filling her small space on the corner of Northeast Mason.

Change has come slower along this corridor than it has on other, once predominately black Portland streets, such as Northeast Alberta Street or North Mississippi Avenue. Half a dozen barber shops still dot the north-south spine, and black folks still congregate at the strip’s few-remaining soul-food restaurants.

But, as it has for countless other black-owned Portland businesses, progress came for Bagley this week. Clients informed her Signature Cutz, the shop she’s run for six years, would be replaced by a five-story apartment complex.

The turnover on MLK has been decades and tens of millions of public dollars in the making. Gradually, businesses that catered to African-Americans have given way to upscale restaurants (

), boutique breakfast spots (

,

) and specialty gyms (

). The same week Bagley learned she might lose her business,

to make way for new apartments.

“It really caught me off guard,” Bagley said. “I’m stressed out, overwhelmed.”

The building's owner plans to tear down Signature Cutz barbershop and replace it with apartments, but Barber Angel Bagley says he never told her she'd have to move.

As Bagley fretted Wednesday, a two-pound chihuahua named Mister paced the place, looking for someone to hold him. Half a dozen people squeezed in at noon for a lunchtime trim. Haircuts cost $17, but just as many people visit to hang out.

“I was driving by, and I thought, let me stop in and say what’s up,” said Demoress Traylor, a 23-year-old who came by on his way to Home Depot. “Barber shops are supposed to be like this. They’re one of the last frontiers of family in America. People just stop by, show love.”

Bagley, a towering former athlete with a curly faux-hawk and oversized boots, scrolled through

on her phone. The land beneath her one-story, 1950 wood-frame business has been on the market for a while, but the owner did not bother to tell her he’d sold it, she said. She got the news from The Oregonian and the details from customers.

“A client just sent me a picture of what the building is going to be like,” she said. “I’m trying to find out who the owner sold it to.”

Bagley started cutting hair during her freshman year at Jefferson High School. Her family had just moved out of the public housing project

, looking for a better life in inner northeast. Her mom was a foster parent, but taking all her kids to the barbershop was too expensive.

“Here,” she said one day, handing her daughter a pair of clippers. “You cut them.”

“I thought, ‘This guy’s hair is about to be messed up,’” Bagley said. “But it came out all right, and I thought, ‘I can do this.’”

Bagley cut hair all through high school and college for extra money. At Jefferson, she was a basketball standout. She averaged 21 points a game and won a full ride to play at Oregon State University.

She imagined she’d be a WNBA star, not a professional clipper. But she hurt her back her sophomore year and lost her scholarship. Bagley returned to Portland, where she took a job helping transport patients to appointments at Providence Hospital. She started cutting the nurses’ hair for fun, and after a few years decided to open her own shop. She enrolled in night school at Beaumont Cosmetology School and earned her license a decade ago.

“I drove straight from work to school and wouldn’t come home until late,” she said. “It was crazy, but it was worth it.”

She opened Signature Cutz in 2007 in a building owned by Jessie Rogers, a retiring barber himself. Bagley installed new wood floors and hired two other barbers. She expanded to the adjacent storefront and built up a list of 60 regulars.

Wednesday’s rush was the same flurry of activity it has been since she opened, Bagley said. Marcus Pack tamed a puffy Afro in the back room, while Mike Cage lined up a fade in the side room. Bagley’s father peeked in but said he’d come back later. He used to let his daughter cut his hair, but she’s always trying to trim his ducktail back, so he goes to Cage instead.

“It’s a great location, in-between everything,” Bagley told the other barbers. “I live right around the corner, so I can walk to work.”

“It’s yuppie town now. Face it,” Pack said. “We knew it was going to happen someday.”

Rogers hasn't sold the building yet, but he has signed a contract promising to sell it to Beaverton-based developer Vic Remmers next month. The Oregonian could not reach Rogers, but Remmers confirmed the details. Proposals for the new building include ground-floor space for a restaurant or café, with apartments above. The architect, Richard Rapp of TVA, told neighbors this week that he expects MLK will soon have the same kinds of shops that Northeast Alberta Street and North Mississippi Avenue have.

Bagley eyed the parking lot and sighed. She’d left a message for the owner, hoping to find out more details. But Pack was right, she said: The writing was on the wall. Her shop wouldn’t last here forever. Maybe she could make a new go in East Portland, she said.

“I guess I’ll look at this place in the numbers,” she said. “It’s actually way cheaper out there, so I can afford the rent all by myself. I like this spot because it’s in the heart of the community, but I need to sleep at night. Right now, I can’t sleep because I’m just stressing about losing it.”

-- Casey Parks