Gladys Ponce shields her mouth with her hand as she explains why she closed Borimex Restaurant earlier this year. Through the window of the small Mexican grocery she operates next door, she points out an occupied blue sedan in a driveway across the street, aimed toward the Carpenter Rd. plaza that’s also home to a laundromat and a bilingual child care center.
ICE has been a near-daily presence since last year, distressing—and at times detaining—her core clientele, she says. Business suffered to the point that she opted to keep a lower profile and free herself of the restaurant’s lease. She’s hoping the grocery will weather a difficult era for those whose families hail from south of the border.
While she speaks, several customers come in, shop, check out, and leave. The sedan remained.
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Pita Express & Catering lasted just a year in Briarwood Mall following their full build-out near Planet Fitness. Mall management left its phone number on the locked door to facilitate access to the still furnished restaurant.
The store’s phone number is now invalid, though its online platforms were prepared to check out orders they apparently could not fulfill. Owner Kaleb Kasham, who previously operated a location near the Carpenter Rd. Target, did not respond to the Observer’s text message as of press time.
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Chicken- and burger-based sports bar Buffalo Wild Wings closed its downtown location May 3 at the end of U-M’s graduation weekend.
It was the original ground-floor tenant for the Corner House Apartments, the eight-story building at S. State and E. Washington, which kicked off the city’s surge in high-rise student housing in 2004.
Shelby Township–based franchisee JK&T Wings retains its other local B-Dubs at 3150 Boardwalk amid several south side hotels.
The 7,638-square-foot space is available for $45 per square foot plus “Triple Net” charges, which translates to a monthly rent of about $28,600 plus property tax, insurance, and maintenance expenses.
Flashback: Downtown’s New Buildings (Dec. 2008)
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A concerned reader clued us in that the Persian House of Imports, a five-decade fixture downtown, hasn’t been open for several months and appears to have been emptied out.
The store’s “temporarily closed” Google listing lends false hope, as longtime proprietor Ali Amiri has passed away. Dozens of his estate’s vintage and antique rugs were auctioned by DuMouchelles in Detroit earlier this year.
Observer archives reveal that Amiri emigrated from Iran in 1961 and eventually set up shop on E. Liberty in a nineteenth-century house, since redeveloped. He moved across the street in 2002 into 325 E. Liberty, which he already owned, selling rugs, tapestries, jewelry, and other wares from the Middle East and Asia.
“He literally was the strongest old man I’ve ever met,” says Bongz & Thongz owner Mohammad Hassan, Amiri’s former tenant at another E. Liberty building two blocks west. “He was showing up to work til the week he died.”
Hassan says Amiri’s Lansing-based trustee intends to sell rather than lease the two-story house, one of seven remaining historic buildings that were originally residences on that block.
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A blue whale, Earth’s largest animal, eats about six tons of krill per day, and much more during feeding season. That daily food budget would cost about $15,000 if a whale had to buy it from humans.
Operating the Blue Whale Cafe took fewer resources than that, but rising costs proved too much for Christy Kaledas. A sign at her vegetarian eatery and raw juice bar in Lamp Post Plaza explains, “We have been unable to accept the increased rent with our new landlord during this difficult economy.”
Kaledas didn’t respond to the Observer’s inquiries, but last summer she said business conditions were “brutal,” citing the impact of tariffs in particular, and doubted she’d continue past the end of her three-year lease this spring.
In November, the plaza on E. Stadium sold for $13.5 million to Pattah Development, based in Sylvan Lake in Oakland County. The family-owned firm’s other local shopping center is Glencoe Crossing on Washtenaw Ave.
Ownership changes prompt a reset of property taxes based on the new market value, whereas Michigan’s Proposal A otherwise limits annual increases to the lesser of 5 percent or the inflation rate.
But Clark Pattah, co-owner of the real estate company, says he hasn’t seen the 2026 assessment yet, and it wasn’t a factor in the renewal offer. “It’s not that we came in and had a ridiculous increase. It was very minimal,” he says. “She didn’t even negotiate.”
He says they’ve already fielded inquiries from a few national tenants for the front-facing space and “like to work with the mom-and-pops” too. “We don’t want anybody to vacate, and we’re not here to hurt anybody.”
Flashback: The Thrivery Is Now Blue Whale Cafe (Nov. 2023) and For Sale: Lamp Post Plaza (Oct. 2025)
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You’d have to sell a whole lot of cupcakes from a downtown storefront to meet overhead, ingredient, and labor costs, and it apparently wasn’t enough for Molly’s Cupcakes at 617 E. Liberty. The store announced its April 18 closure on Instagram.
Flashback: Cupcakes and Beyond (Aug. 2024)
The award-winning cupcakes arrived in Ann Arbor less than two years ago in a school-themed shop named for founder John Nicolaides’s third-grade teacher. The brand retains a strong presence in the Chicago area along with stores in three other states. Messages seeking comment from the business received no response.
Orijin Bakery, an extension of The Boro, is expected to take its place in July. The Pulpo Group, which includes Sava, Aventura, and Dixboro Project, announced that executive pastry chef Jin Capobianco Gorian is partnering on the concept offering laminated pastries, sweet baked goods, and savory breads.
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After fourteen months in Woodland Plaza at S. Main and Ann Arbor–Saline Rd., Gaby Coleman has closed Bonchon, her franchise of the Korean fried chicken chain. The decision is “due to disagreements with the franchisor,” she tells the Observer, though the pending issues made her reluctant to elaborate.
She says she’s been working with the plaza’s landlord to find a successor tenant to whom she hopes to sell the restaurant equipment. Coleman continues to run three European Wax Center locations, including one in Oak Valley Center, with plans to add more in the near future.
Flashback: The Korean Fried Chicken Boom Continues (Feb. 2025)
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The Ann Arbor area’s sole Dollar General store closed May 14. It had been in Glencoe Crossing since 2003. Its fifteen most recent Google reviews, stretching back more than a year, were either one or two stars out of five.
A company spokesperson emails that the decision follows a “thorough review,” and employees were given the opportunity to transfer to nearby stores.
The publicly owned deep-discount retailer operates more than 20,800 stores nationwide, employing about 194,000, according to its website. For perspective, that’s more U.S. workers than any automaker currently has.
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