Marketplace

When Briarwood Mall opened in 1974 it looked less like a shopping center than a museum. Its cast-concrete exterior was carefully sculpted, and art installations and fountains adorned its broad, polished corridors.Now those...

Chris Klademenos quietly closed the Flim Flam Family Restaurant & Deli in the Plymouth Road Mall for the last time on Sunday, November 5, at the end of the regular business day. The next day he met with the landlords....

Kappa Koney, tucked into a tiny plaza on the corner of Maple and West Liberty, closed in November. “It was good food,” says Jon Hannawa, working behind the counter at Buster’s convenience store next door....

Sandy Cadotte-Keys, owner of Dragon’s Lair Futons and Organic Mattresses, claims it is the oldest extant futon store in the country. If she seems to have dropped off the map for a few years, that’s not her fault....

Ali Hijazi opened his third Zamaan Cafe in the Colonnade in October, but he had to close his first location on Packard to do it. It was a question of manpower. “There’s just too many things going on to do it all...

Sandy Cadotte-Keys of Dragon’s Lair Futons is the latest merchant frustrated by the city’s draconian sign ordinance, which she believes unfairly hobbled her for the two years she tried to do business from a warehouse...

A single shadeless red light bulb illuminates the front porch. There is no business sign. The street-level windows are dark, unless there’s a movie being screened inside. But if you look up at the second story,...

Lily Grace is the name of Cyndi Clark’s granddaughter. Like all babies, she has beautiful skin and makes a good mascot for a skin care store–a framed six-by-nine-inch photo of the luminous-skinned toddler is parked...

When I worked in northeast Ann Arbor more than a decade ago, I enjoyed occasional lunch-hour trips to a Middle Eastern deli/diner in the Courtyard Shops. I remember being puzzled by its name, Exotic Bakeries, since I always...

Borders’ bankruptcy last year and the endless hype about e-books sent a collective shiver through the city’s remaining booksellers, who also had seen Shaman Drum close in 2009. But as of mid-December, sales at...

Imagine a non-Tim Hortons, anti-Bob Evans, un-Dunkin’ Donuts sort of dark coffee cave, and you’ll be on the right track toward Ypsilanti’s Ugly Mug Cafe and Roastery. Dozens of little spotlights and lamps with...

Helen Harding and Blake Reetz opened Eat Catering and Carryout in the former Marcano’s space on Packard in mid-November. Harding, twenty-six, and Reetz, thirty, met as teenagers working at the Jefferson Market on...

We received 190 entries correctly identifying the December Fake Ad for the Cumberfun accessory designed to conceal the gap above young men’s baggy pants.More than a few Fake Adders thought the Cumberfun was just the thing...

Albanian immigrant Sava Lelcaj was just twenty-three when she started her eponymous sandwich shop in 2007. Despite what she later saw as extortionate rent, she survived. Still, a lot of business watchers thought it was a...