South of I-94 on State Street, work continues on Black Rock Bar & Grill. Here’s the exterior as it appeared this weekend, before the past two days of rain.
This site was a Chi-Chi’s for decades, before Chi-Chi’s succumbed to debt and a Hepatitis scare in the early 2000s. After Chi-Chi’s retreated to supermarket shelves and, um, Belgium, the space became a Japanese restaurant called Cherry Blossom for a brief time. Finally, a coat of blue paint on the adobe facade signaled the arrival of Passport, an ambitious world-cuisine concept from beloved campus Chinese take-out spot Lucky Kitchen. After Passport’s border closed, the space was blue and still until Black Rock arrived.
Black Rock originally opened in Hartland, about an hour north of this location, a few years back, and quickly expanded to several locations around Detroit and, in parallel, Orlando, Florida. A friend who has visited one explained to me that the name comes from a stone slab, heated to a high temperature and presented alongside your meal . Then, you use the stone and its retained heat to cook your steak, so each bite is “hot off the grill.” (They offer pre-cooked entrees also.)
Spotted at Oak Valley: the former Famous Footwear space near Target is Xfinity. In many Comcast markets, the local service centers are located in shopping centers and take the form of Xfinity Store, a casual shopping experience, rather than the traditional South Industrial waiting room where you may have gotten your new cable box from in the past. Here, they can also get you signed up for Xfinity Mobile, their wireless phone plan. (Although Xfinity branded, it is secretly Verizon, so you know it will be consistent nationwide, even in markets where other cable companies have the monopoly. I didn’t get a picture because it was grey and rainy tonight, sorry.
To answer a question frequently asked this summer: it doesn’t look like they did much of anything to the corner of Waters Road and Ann Arbor-Saline Road, except introduce a lane out of the parking lot directly onto southbound Saline Road. For decades, the only ways out have been either onto Waters Road near Target, or driving behind Chuck E. Cheese and getting onto Oak Valley Drive, so I guess I consider this an improvement, because what was all that stupid foliage doing there anyway? Time to pound sand, plants.
Finally, an update on the Hyatt Place lot. The hotel is now open for business (travelers), but the outlot building in front is still unoccupied and apparently available for lease. My owl friend Arbor Annie recently took a closer look and confided to me that the small, solar-roofed accessory structure by the street is a bike lock, and there is also one of those adorable water fountains that have one bowl for people and one bowl for dogs. Which, cool, but I still have no idea what this building is supposed to be. I can already tell that this will keep me up all ni?
The former Pier 1 Imports on Carpenter Road has been split into two storefronts. One of them is now open — an Aspen Dental location (a chain, like Subway, only for dentists, not Sandwich Artists).
The other store was still stripped to the walls when I took this photo, but there were literally people in there making plans, so expect something soon. Last year this was a pop-up Halloween store, so this is something like progress.
Le Bon Macaron is an eastward expansion of a 
Drought is a 