What do a British telephone booth, pillar post box, park bench, and two signposts with Chinese and English flags behind the Hot Pot Chen restaurant have in common? Does the Chinese signage on the shipping container behind the objects hold a clue? And why is everything pink?
Read MoreTwenty-one-year-old culinary artist Leslie Tejada has come a long way from the Dominican Republic, where she spent her first ten years. Briarwood Mall was impressed enough with her cupcakes—and her Instagram presence—to lease her space for The Plates of Joyy, which opened September 20.
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The nation’s first retail milk vending machine is now open in Lodi Twp. It’s part of a longtime family farm’s strategy to sustain its operation for another generation.
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Shortly after 6 a.m. on Feb. 19, residents of the West Side were jolted awake by the sound of an explosion, followed by the wail of fire and police sirens. A small house at 701 S. Seventh St. had blown up.
Read MoreSchool construction program buys three lots, Veridian sells its first three units, and a rebuild sells for more than three times its purchase price.
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His Bouma Group, Realtors had listed a very rare commodity: two nearly one-acre house lots at 2751 and 2731 Washtenaw Ave., just east of the Stadium fork. “But getting access to the land was the problem,” he says. “We found out that no buyer wanted to move forward on that property because they didn’t have access to it.”
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DeRosa began offering improv classes and performances in February. He’s now ready to open the brewpub, which operates separately from the ticketed shows. Outside the theater room are the taphouse, a front patio with firepit tables and heated seating, a beer garden for yard games and live music, and their food truck kitchen serving what he describes as “upscale carnival food,” including smashburgers, chicken tenders, Belgian frites, and corn dogs.
Read MoreIn June 2023, Briarwood Mall announced the forthcoming M Den Annex, “its third store and largest Briarwood Mall location yet.” It never opened, and now The M Den and its neighboring The Victors Collection are out of the mall entirely.
Read More“People think we’re just a bakery,” says Molly’s Cupcakes founder John Nicolaides. “We’re really more than that. I wanted a place where young adults could hang out and not be a bar.”
Read MoreHash Bash event coordinator Jamie Lowell is part of the group that has purchased the Green Planet dispensary, which closed last year after thirteen years. It recently reopened as Meds Cafe, which has seven locations, all in Michigan.
Read MoreA Chinese hot-pot restaurant that opened in May is already garnering dozens of five-star reviews online.
Read MoreWhen Candace Kovar’s search led to Washington, D.C.–based Toastique, “I got goosebumps. It was an intuitive gut feeling that this is the ride we’re supposed to be on.”
Read MoreThe new MilkShake Factory near Westgate seems like a straightforward store for sweets: shakes, sundaes, and sheets of chocolate, seven days a week. But there’s a lot going on behind the scenes, because the franchise owner also happens to be the fast-growing company’s president.
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What follows is an imaginary itinerary across the continents, all within greater Ann Arbor. Whether in search of the familiar favorites that constitute our own version of soul food, or an adventure into ever-widening horizons, it can be found here, and without the jet lag.
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“I have the best of both worlds,” she says. “It feels like I’m in the country, but I’m close to downtown and the Old West Side.”
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Earlier this year, Kimberly Baker Crouch’s family sold the house on N. Fourth Ave. that five generations of Bakers had called home, and she and her niece Brianna Murphy moved to an apartment on Ann Arbor’s northeast side.
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When Marta Dabis first visited Great Oak Cohousing, she says, “I immediately knew that I had arrived home.” A Hungarian native and Zen Buddhist priest, Dabis says her neighborhood, where she’s lived since 2017, “feels like Europe inside,” with its colorful buildings clustered close together, community gardens, walking paths, and residents who know each other by name.
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As one of the “Morton Moms,” Erika Boehnke can count on getting at least ten texts a day—and she wouldn’t have it any other way. The Morton Moms, eight women who all live within a block on Morton Ave. in Burns Park, depend on each other to help out when life happens .
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Nu2U Again, the Saline thrift store with a mission to employ and serve people with disabilities, is adding an Ann Arbor location at Carpenter and Packard.
Read MoreThree years after taking over the Courtyard Shops storefront and much of the inventory of Bookbound Bookstore, the couple cited family considerations in choosing to pass the torch—not necessarily to the highest bidder, but as “a values-based decision of what we think will be sustainable,” Render says. Rather than “just rich people making stuff for rich people, we wanted to make sure first-time business owners could do this.”
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