Kansas Profile – Now That’s Rural: Stacy Wurtz, Frontage 109
At a glance: In Leonardville, Stacy and Brian Wurtz purchased a cool limestone building that had been an antique store with a hair salon in the back. The building has now become an events center known as Frontage 109 that hosts various community events.
More information: Ron Wilson, rwilson@ksu.edu, 785-532-7690
Photos: Ron Wilson | Stacy and Brian Wurtz
Website: Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development
April 15, 2026
By Ron Wilson, director of the Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development at Kansas State University
The Festival of Trees is underway. The beautifully decorated trees are admired by visitors who have come from as far away as Wisconsin.
This is an example of a community benefit hosted at a facility provided by an entrepreneurial family in rural Kansas.
Stacy Wurtz and her husband Brian are owners of Frontage 109, which hosts the annual Festival of Trees and many other events in Leonardville, Kansas.
Stacy grew up near Randolph, attended cosmetology college, and later earned a certificate in executive coaching. Brian grew up at Riley and went to Fort Hays State before coming back to farm and ranch in Riley County. They married and live on a farm/ranch near Randolph today.
Stacy worked for Farm Bureau Insurance and then Frontier Farm Credit. She became interested in strategic planning for businesses and organizations. She did such planning with Advisors Excel and now is a manager with Innovate 24, an independent Riley County economic development organization. Brian and Stacy also own a facility named One-Iron where she does executive business coaching.
In her early years of marriage, Wurtz was cutting hair, mostly for friends and neighbors. Her husband fixed up a hair salon in an old barn nearby. That worked fine until one cold day during calving season, when she went to style a girl’s hair for prom and found two baby calves next to a heater in her salon.
“My customer got a big laugh out of it,” Wurtz said.
In 2016, Wurtz saw an old stone building for sale in the nearby community of Leonardville. It had been an antique store with a hair salon in the back. They purchased the building and closed on it in the same month that their oldest daughter was born.
“Nothing like adding a newborn and a building renovation to your plate at the same time,” Wurtz said.
They made renovations and opened the hair salon. “We weren’t sure what to do with the front part,” Wurtz said. They had birthday parties for their kids there. Eventually the area became an event space.
The building is located at 109 West Barton Street in Leonardville and 109 happens to be a combination of their favorite numbers.
“One of our first dates was on a frontage road,” Wurtz said. They put the two together and named the facility Frontage 109.
“It was harder to name the business than it was to name our kids,” Wurtz said with a smile.
The Wurtz’s have frequently donated their event space for community benefits through the years. Wurtz reflected on 10 years of activities.
“Scrolling through the years, I realized just how many organizations have filled this space: church groups, FFA chapters, school clubs, fundraisers, community meetings, celebrations, and everything in between,” Wurtz said.
It has become multi-generational. Wurtz remembers styling prom hair for girls and later hosting their bridal showers and their baby showers there.
On one occasion, Wurtz was applying for a grant that needed support letters from the community. She sent out a request to community friends for three letters – and received a flood of them. “I had no idea how much people appreciated what we had done,” Wurtz said.
Wurtz says she appreciates small town values: “I brag about things like when I sent my kids walking to the library while I cleaned, only to find out later the library had closed an hour earlier -- but (the librarian) kept it open because she knew I was busy.”
“We have neighbors who use the facility and leave it better than they found it, every single time, and families who babysat our kids so we could set up for events or so I could finish hair appointments late into the evening,” she said.
These are qualities found in a rural community such as Leonardville, population 432 people. Now, that’s rural.
Among other events, Frontage 109 hosts the annual Festival of Trees, which is a fundraiser for the Leonardville Area Business Association and which attracts lots of guests during the holidays.
We salute Stacy Wurtz and family for making a difference with local entrepreneurship and positive small town values.
Audio and text files of Kansas Profiles are available at www.huckboydinstitute.org/kansas-profiles. For more information about the Huck Boyd Institute, interested persons can visit www.huckboydinstitute.org.
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