In mid-February, Pete Landrum and his father-in-law, Jay Harshe, a retired contractor, were presiding over an enormous but orderly renovation and expansion of the Red Brick Kitchen & Bar. “Basically the whole place is being gutted,” says Landrum.

“We toyed with the idea” of expanding into the adjacent building before it was sold to briefly become Bits and Pizzas, says Landrum, adding that he and his wife, Megan, “were kicking ourselves” when they didn’t do it. But late last fall, the pizza place closed, and they jumped. Besides doubling their space, the new building brings the additional blessing of a red brick exterior–until now, all the restaurant’s red brick was on the inside.

By February, a hole had been knocked in the walls to unite the two buildings,I-beam supports inserted, and edges neatly trimmed with the brick that was taken out, so it looked like the two rooms had been united all along. Covered up again by plywood, construction was quietly continuing on the old Bits and Pizzas side.

Anxious to preserve the coziness and friendliness of the restaurant, they’re not planning sweeping menu changes, “but we hope with a new, large kitchen we can be just a little more ambitious,” says Landrum. Now thirty-five, he was just was seventeen when his father and two brothers started Ann Arbor’s Cafe Felix, which came by its European ambience naturally (his mother, Patricia, is French). His father, Michael, died in 2000, and his brother Robert now is sole owner of the Ann Arbor cafe. (His other brother, David, went on to found Two James Spirits, a distillery in Detroit, whose liquors can be sampled at both Cafe Felix and the Red Brick.)

“We’re hoping by the end of May to be finished. Until then we’re trying to work it out with the design guys to section off areas to work on,” says Landrum. They’ll keep at least some part of the restaurant open most of the time until then. “It would be done a lot faster if we could shut it down for three weeks, but we are trying to keep our staff earning money.”

Red Brick Kitchen & Bar, 8093 Main St. 424-0420. Mon.-Wed. 11 a.m.-10 p.m., Thurs.-Sat. 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Closed Sun. redbrickkitchen.com

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Nearly anyone who was at Huron Camera the last few years noticed that the store that has stood on Main St. for decades didn’t seem healthy. Customers visited the way you’d visit an aged confined relative–so you could give yourself a little pat on the back for bringing some cheer into a gloomy place.

Owner John Kingsley closed the store at year-end. It seems beyond redundant to even mention why business was off, but someone has to say it: “Yeah, it’s a mix between online stores and places like Best Buy,” which provide cheaper, easier access to products for the beginner, says Kevin Dolan, a salesperson at Camera Mart in Pontiac, one of about a half-dozen surviving full-service camera stores in southeastern Michigan. The invention of the digital camera also eliminated the need for film and film processing, formerly important revenue streams for camera shops.

Ann Arbor painter Lois Lovejoy, who uses photography both in her work, and to document her work, notes that selling cameras is only the beginning of what a good camera store provides. “Binoculars, camera bags, magazines, photo storage systems. I like to talk with a knowledgeable person and physically hold equipment in my hand, something you can’t do online.” Not to mention maintenance–for high-end digital cameras with interchangeable lenses, one in-house service Camera Mart provides, and Huron provided, was cleaning the sensors. “Very important,” says Dolan. “On a digital camera, the sensor is essentially the ‘film,’ so you have to keep it clean.”

John Kingsley isn’t idle–he’s also supervisor of Webster Township.

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Like Dexter photographers, local scrapbookers are also out of luck. Polly’s Paper Studio, around the corner from Huron Camera on Broad St., has closed. Owner Ginny Nemchak (Polly was her cat) moved her store to Dexter from Pinckney in 2012. She is still blogging and selling scrapbooking supplies on Etsy.com.

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Kids Fashion Jungle closed in November. Tamara Douglas opened her quality resale shop–no stains, no Xhilaration or Route 66 clothing–at Dexter Crossing in 2013.