Marketplace

Next door to Chelsea Bakery, William Harris–owner of Just Imagine, a book, toy, and music store–is strumming a guitar while he chats with a customer. At the end of March he moved his business, which he opened four...

GCO became The Floor Trader when its parent company acquired Stone Mountain Carpet Mills, merged the two, and neither company wanted to take the other’s name. “I like the new name,” says Matt Merkel, who opened...

In May, Dexter residents Kim and Saing Yam opened the Chelsea Bakery in the former Glee Cake & Pastry space on Main Street–and Kim says the community response has been “overwhelming.” The husband-and-wife...

Flophouse Skateboards, underneath Taco King, started when another basement business, Eco Sign Solutions, began spilling over into Taco King’s storage space. After some polite nagging, Taco King owner Saber Naghmouchi...

Bogdasarian, forty-three, is the president of the Promanas Group, an Ann Arbor real estate investment firm, and he feels fortunate to have made it through the Great Recession. “In the end of 2007 and pretty much all of...

Of the abrupt March closing of Dexter’s Coney Island, landlord Loreen McCalla had this to say of Jim Cacini and son Brian, who opened the business in 2012: “They’re in the hole $10,000 to me. I told them when...

It took the sharp eyes of reader Robert Koernke to notice this subtle change: Curry Up is now Curry On. Calling Will Shortz, the puzzle master. Can’t you just hear him saying: “Take the word ‘curry,’...

“The business climate has changed. Sales since 2008 have been very gradually declining, yet our events were really popular,” Monica Wilson says. She’s explaining why the Clay Gallery, an eighteen-member...

After twenty-five years in business, a May auction marked the closing of Marj Daniels’ Uptown Antiques. Daniels could not be reached for comment, but Chelsea Area Chamber of Commerce executive director Bob Pierce says...

Restaurants always circle college campuses–students don’t cook much. The new high-rises and dorms that have sprung up, many just a few blocks away, are another reason State and Liberty is now practically wall-to-wall...

The retail change at 726 Brooks is rather slight–that there is any retail at all on this quiet Water Hill street is probably the biggest news to most, but the worn, block building set far back from the street is clearly...

Owner-chef Harold Solomon’s specialty is pizza and cookies. His Bake Me Crazy is aimed at campus, an area already well-supplied with pizza and cookies, but the competition does seem a bit tame, or sane, by comparison....

Dick Sampier has semi-retired and moved out of the building behind Stadium Hardware. A sign posted on the door says he’ll be doing vacuum repairs out of his home.Dick Sampier Vacuum was the vacuum world’s Willy Wonka...

For decades, the opening of Le Dog has been a rite of spring on East Liberty. So when the tiny, red-painted hot dog stand instead posted a sign sending customers to its Main Street branch, word traveled fast.”Don’t...