“It’s Really a Time Machine”
Otto’s Arcade & Club, headquarters for Mitch Rohde’s curation of vintage video games, serves several purposes: museum, social club, event space, and public gaming venue.
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Marketplace
A Classroom in Saline
Stomping, clapping, and chanting—“Kona, Kona, Kona!”—thundered from the two front rows of the bleachers. The family, friends, and students of fifth-grade teacher Kaylee Harmon’s eight-year-old Shepherd mix cheered on the winner out of five canine contenders in Saline Community Fair’s Fifth Annual Dog of the Year Contest. Kona took home a first-place blue ribbon, plaque, and $150 gift card from Saline’s Tractor Supply Co.
Read MoreClay + Code Stimulates Both Sides of the Brain
Salinians Tara and Hardik Joshi are combining their respective skills in pottery and robotics for Clay + Code, their new learning center and retail store.
Read MoreCourageous Books Comes to Dexter
It’s more than just her own lifelong love of literature and language that led Jen Stevenson to launch Courageous Books.
Read MoreKing’s Keyboard House Takes a Bow
King’s Keyboard House, the city’s last remaining piano store, has closed after sixty-four years. Second-generation owner Jim King had hoped the business would continue in new hands, but he has retired and sold the building at 2363 E. Stadium, its home since 2008.
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From Coffee to Gifts
The displacement of stores by restaurants downtown is not a one-way street: on S. Main, a gift boutique has replaced a coffee shop.
Read MoreTwo More ‘Shroom Shops
Stores offering various mushroom-based products continue to sprout up around town, finding fertile soil in the city’s relative tolerance of entheogenic plants and fungi.
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White Lotus Grows a Café
The collaborative enterprise of the local Tsogyelgar Buddhist community is expanding into a new multifaceted storefront on Zeeb Rd., White Lotus Farms Café.
Read MoreAugust 2025 Ann Arbor Home Sales
University Commons’ first $1 million sale: Praxis Properties CEO Bill Kinley sold his 3,500-square-foot, three-bed, three-bath unit for $1,040,000, a record for the complex of ninety-two condos built in 2000.
Read MoreRaising Cane’s Nabs a Prime South U Spot
Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers couldn’t have plucked a more prominent campus perch for its third Michigan store, number 935 overall for the privately held Baton Rouge–based chain.
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Alex Kent is Amused
Atomic Trading Co., Alex Kent’s new vintage boutique in Nickels Arcade, is the furthest thing you’ll find from a market-analysis-based enterprise tailored to capitalize on consumer trends.
Read MoreYemeni Coffee Comes to Campus
The surge of Yemeni coffee and tea shops has reached the campus area with Būn Chai, recently launched on the busy block of S. State between Liberty and North U.
Read MoreJuly 2025 Ann Arbor Home Sales
For roughly a decade last century, the neighborhoods around Packard and Platt were their own city. East Ann Arbor separated from Pittsfield Twp. in 1947, only to accept annexation to Ann Arbor in 1956 in exchange for completing a water and sewage system. Ever since, its modest neighborhoods have provided much of the city’s most affordable housing—but as this month’s map shows, even “affordable” is now more than $300,000.
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The Meaning of the $3,100 Campus Studio
As move-in began this August, Vic Village South’s website advertised, “Leasing Now Open for 2025–26!” Social media ads announced, “We have 1, 2, 3, and 4-Bedroom apartments available!”
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Work and Play at Recess Cafe
Thressa Nichols, a people operations professional who works remotely, decided to open the business she wanted to patronize. She and her husband, Zac Hodgkin, are launching Recess Cafe, where young children can play while their adults work or socialize while enjoying coffee, elevated snacks, and even wine and beer.
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A Paletería in Scio
The latest scoop from Scio Township: the ambitious Arreola brothers have added a Mexican paletería within Dos Hermanos Express.
Read MoreYour Media Exchange Takes Diggers’ Spot
Your Media Exchange is returning to Ann Arbor to make a longer-term home in the basement of Kerrytown Market & Shops, replacing its sister business, Diggers, which opened last year.
Read MoreA Convenience Store at Briarwood Mall?
The Marketplace Changes beat includes periodic walks through Briarwood Mall, getting in steps while tracking stores’ comings and goings.
Read MoreVintage media, flowers, and immigrant crafts at Lobby Shops
Sixty-three small-scale enterprises, intrigued by the prospect of affordable overhead downtown, vied for three retail spaces at the Ann Arbor District Library’s new “Lobby Shops.”
Read MoreSamba Bowls and Buff City Are Gone
Rave reviews for their Brazilian açaí bowls and exotic smoothies weren’t enough to keep Samba Bowls afloat. The eatery closed Aug. 17, just three days after announcing it and fourteen months after unveiling a cheery remake of the former Vogel’s Lock & Safe on W. Washington.
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