“Thirty years! That’s three-zero! And four months!” said Kyung Kim over the phone, marveling at how long she’s operated the Town Cobbler at Briarwood (and it actually opened in 1973). She’s now retiring. “But why don’t you come here in person, and then you can see my smiling face?” she asked.
Smiling faces tend to be in short supply when businesses close, so we took her up on it. A few hours later, she was watching customer Bob Gula’s foot intently as he asked her about a problem. “Pronating … big lump just getting bigger … here, put this in heel,” she said, handing him a rubber wedge. He pronounced himself cured. “I have a gift,” she said. A gift, plus she’s a former nurse who worked in orthopedic surgery in Chicago many years ago.
When her father-in-law gave her enough money to start a business, she decided to get out of critical care: “It’s boring dealing with sick people.” Instead she found a business that was on the market that she thought might make use of her skills. She’s already sold her machinery and repair stock to a supplier in Chicago, but much of her retail stock up front she’s giving away to various charities.
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The sudden closing of eight of the eleven Michigan Max and Erma’s restaurants on January 18 made a surprisingly big splash in the daily papers and Detroit news broadcasts–you’d think a real-life Max and Erma had been put out on the street. (The name was taken from a couple who sold their Columbus restaurant to some developers in 1972.)
Despite the press, a lot of customers didn’t get the memo. At noon January 19, a steady stream of folks were showing up for lunch as Metro Detroit Signs removed Max & Erma’s name from the Eisenhower restaurant. (The sign workers shrugged when customers asked whether the chain was closed or just remodeling, though, when challenged, a worker admitted he knew it was gone for good.) For now, Max and Erma’s website still shows locations in Detroit Metropolitan Airport, Clinton Township, and Lansing. At one time there were as many as eighty of them nationwide, but the company has been skirting bankruptcy since 2009.
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“It was a short-term lease, and the business in Jackson was growing, so we expanded it there. It was much easier to grow a business in one place than scout a new location in Ann Arbor” is Ricco DeCola’s explanation of why he and brother Paolo closed Gold Crown Jewelers early this year. Their Jackson store opened four years before they opened the full-service jewelry store in a former gas station on Stadium. Paolo makes custom jewelry by hand and does repairs. “We also have a watchmaker on site, one of the few in the area.” He repairs “everything from Rolex to Omega.”
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Biggby Coffee on Packard near State “kind of disappeared one day. My co-workers and I used to go there and get coffee,” says Rick Wasser, who works nearby. Then “before Christmas they put up a sign that they were going to have different holiday hours, and then they never opened again.” Franchisee Jeannine Mickeleit still owns the Biggby on Stadium.
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Yogi Grocery, an Indian and Pakistani market in Arbor Square Plaza, at Carpenter and Ellsworth, closed sometime in the last year. Swisher Commercial broker Mike Jurgenson says of the owner, “I’m guessing she retired. We don’t have any information that she opened anywhere else.” He doesn’t know who “she” was, exactly (our 2006 article on its opening said the owner was a man named Yogesh Thoria). Jurgenson says a spa/massage and a check-cashing business have signed leases for the Yogi space and the adjoining space.
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Got a retail or restaurant change? Email sallymitani@gmail.com, or leave voicemail at (734) 769-3175 x 309.
