Category: Uncategorized

Latest from Maple Village: I had some business to conduct at the Secretary of State office (it’s Michigan’s equivalent to the Department of Motor Vehicles). And although I have a marvelous device with me at all times to help me survive a wait in such an office, I didn’t need to wait today.

Mi-TimeLine is awkwardly named, but worked a treat. I “checked in” after lunch, received a spot in the virtual line, with text updates estimating when to arrive. They adjusted their estimate about 45 minutes sooner over the afternoon. I arrived at the final estimated time and found my number at #1 on the “next” board. I was out with my new plate and tags five minutes after walking in. It was as close to joy as I have ever experienced in an SOS office. It’s a good thing they didn’t take my ID photo, I would have done the Calvin Smile.

There is nothing going on yet in this corner spot adjacent to T-Mobile:

Near the main driveway into Maple Village, this is the site along Maple Road that mall management is trying to get a restaurant for:

Still no sign of Ulta Beauty. I think Ulta will go into that empty spot near Dunham’s, if it doesn’t go into the empty spot near Kirkland’s.

Here’s the latest work on the enormous LA Fitness box going up on the south end of the site. Longtime visitors will remember a Hardee’s restaurant here where the building starts (old-school Hardee’s, before they merged with Carl’s Jr. and became their midwest twin down to the star logo), later replaced by Golden Chef, a Chinese restaurant that eventually burned down.

Rumor had a west-side Tim Horton’s going on the site, but those rumors never came to fruition. Hardee’s neighbor was Frank’s, a beloved nursery and craft supply store headquartered in Troy that wound down in the late ’00s (previously on A2RS).

Another Michigan chain that used to be in Maple Village is Church’s Lumber Yards, long ago a fixture in the back corner behind the Village Pharmacy (also gone). When I was young, Church’s was a fixture around the Detroit area — a lumber yard with a hardware selection. When big-box lumber and hardware chains Builder’s Square, HQ, Home Depot, and Lowe’s all rose to prominence, Church’s vanished. But unlike Frank’s, they didn’t die out. They achieved the “right-sizing” that so many chains try to nail when they close stores. Church’s is now two locations north of Detroit, focusing on projects and professionals.

After Church’s deconstructed the space became an Anytime Fitness franchise. That Anytime location recently moved to a renovated space on Jackson Road between the I-94 on-ramps, which opened this space up for… go ahead and guess. I mean it’s almost September, what are we missing now besides pumpkin spice?

Yup, seasonal Halloween pop up stores! They’re coming, y’all!

Spirit Halloween will be here in Maple Village. I didn’t want to take photos in the windows, because there are literally workers setting up displays right now, amidst some abandoned Anytime Fitness design accents.

Blogfriend Dan will be pleased to hear that Spirit is also coming to Briarwood, joining its sister chain Spencer’s on the JC Penney side of the mall.

This space most recently held a pop-up bounce house activity center, before its bisection, to open a nail salon with direct entry to the parking lot.

Dan also discovered on a recent excursion that Halloween City, the pop-up sister of Party City, is moving into the recently vacated Toys R Us store at Arborland and, post-Hallows, will remain longer as Christmas City. I am uncertain whether this is a holiday decorations concept or part of Party City’s excursion into pop-up toy stores to fill the void left by TRU.

People have occasionally asked me what was going on with that corner by Michigan Stadium. Well, now you all know it’s a tanning salon with a membership model. (Maybe they all have membership models, I wouldn’t know, because I don’t tan — at least, not with intent.)

Deep in the comments, someone mentions in the Ann Arbor Townie Group that the MDen owns that corner, but only really needs it to locate a pop-up store for home football games, to add to their permanent stores within Michigan Stadium and Crisler Center — so it wouldn’t make sense to open a permanent location there. (Is it hearsay if it’s attributed to an actual person?) It is much smaller than any of their other locations I have visited, and the large windows mean they can’t hang clothes on that wall (unless they put racks in front of the window, making the space even smaller and filling the window with the back of clothes racks). I also anticipate the stock space is probably very roomy for a mobile phone retailer, but would quickly become cozy with garments.

Here’s what MDen feels they need — a new storefront at Briarwood filled with upscale Michigan gear from the likes of Brooks Brothers and Vineyard Vines. I don’t have any photos but hit up that MLive link, there are all the photos your rheumy eyes can stand. This is connected to their longtime Briarwood store next door, much like their State Street location.

Aunt Agatha’s closed a few days back. They had sales on their remaining stock the last few weeks, then offered for free what was left over on the last day. Soon after that, a photo of a rollaway full of books made the townie-book rounds. It’s really hard to get rid of old books that nobody wants. It’s difficult to recycle them due to fabric book covers, old glue in the binding, etc. I don’t think Aunt Agatha’s had a lot of choices.

Finally, from South Industrial, two exciting pieces of news:

• Pileated Brewing is expanding its hours. Pileated has made major strides since its opening toward the back of the small office and retail space most famous for hosting the Ann Arbor PTO Thrift Shop. Both businesses support the schools at least indirectly – Pileated is co-owned by two AAPS teachers. Traditionally they had a limited schedule where they were closed on school nights, but they recently hired help to work the taps, so they’ll be open Tuesday through Saturday this school year. They also installed some softer lighting in the seating area and stopped using the industrial-ish fluorescent tubes.
• Ann Arbor T-Shirt Company, the print-on-demand apparel operation, is moving from across the street to ?, if the for-lease sign can be believed:

  

• Ricewood’s season ends Saturday with tacos. Here’s the Thursday lunch crowd avoiding the last-day lines::

  

  The line moved pretty fast, they had three men in the truck, and I managed to get brisket, so, you know, yay me. I think the plan is still to move them inside Morgan & York, who now serve beer and wine by the glass, and put a taco truck here. Frank, Ricewood’s owner, just opened Poçai a few blocks up Packard, and is starting over with a new crew at Ma Lou’s, his waffle place chicken joint in Ypsi.

Happy end of summer!

I was near Eisenhower and Saline Road the other day and noticed that the A2 Gateway Shell at the corner has upgraded their Coke fountain to a tiny Freestyle designed to sit on an existing counter:

Worth noting:

– Unlike a full-size Freestyle, this machine has both a tap to dispense the beverage AND a chute to dispense the ice

– The graphical user interface is more animated and slower than the full-size Freestyle machine

– After this was installed, the price for a 44oz drink shot up from $1.29 to $1.99

– The normal Pepsi fountain machine remains on the other side of the counter. It has like six or eight taps

South of here, at State and Ellsworth, the Speedway has completed its transformation into a Speedy Cafe, Speedway’s take on a Sheetz or Wawa type of quick-service food concept.

As with the ones I’ve visited in Dundee and Hartland (and apparently at Walt Disney World now), you order your sandwich, pizza, burger, hot dog, or wrap on a touch screen, then the Cafe crew member makes it. I’ve tried the burgers in the past and they were okay for the price and convenience factor. This time I tried a toasted steak sub sandwich. I enjoyed the bun and the peppers and lettuce were pleasantly crisp, but the steak definitely seemed prepackaged, especially when I realized it had onions already in it (I definitely didn’t request onions, but there they were).

My favorite feature of this store is that since the pizzas are made to order, they don’t have the rotating oven heating individual slices by the fountain machine, and hence you don’t get hit with the chemical-burning slice oven smell when you open the door.  I haven’t taken photos inside yet because that would be super conspicuous, but trust me, it looks a lot like the ones from their website, linked above.

Now seems as good a time as any to pay tribute to Ann Arbor’s oldest Speedway location, at Carpenter and Packard. Specifically its roof.

Unlike nearly any other gas station in town, the roof of this classic Speedway station goes out of its way to protect you, the consumer, from rain and snow. Newer builds don’t have this roof.

This Speedway station even predates the wide expansion Speedway undertook in the Ann Arbor area when its parent company acquired Total Petroleum’s US convenience-store business.

Above, here’s the TOTAL station on Stadium across from the Post Office. In the photo it was transitioning from Leonard to TOTAL. In the early 2000s, Tota would exit the US market and license its trademark to a fuel retailer called Diamond Shamrock, who would eventually sell their stations in our market to Speedway, a subsidiary of Marathon based in Ohio.

I was on Main Street recently to meet my friend and collaborator Patti Smith for tacos. (Inviting me to lunch is an excellent way to ensure up-to-date coverage of a particular area.)

Renaissance has come home to Main Street, in the… (mall? Let’s call it a Mall) at 806 South Main. Previously closer to William, the longtime downtown fixture for grownup clothes moved to Division Street a few years back and spent some time on the street level of the Google building downtown. The discontinuation of Renaissance’s presence at Towne Centre seems to dovetail nicely with Google’s move to the north side. But I’m glad to see them back on Main Street with Le Dög and CW Petersen Jewelry, maker of our wedding rings!

I have no idea what’s going in across the street but they’re really moving on that new building. Does the eye doctor own this? I assume it will be too expensive for anyone but Michigan Parents to actually shop at.

Down the way, The Ark prepares for the coming flood of singer-songwriters, folkies, and acoustic-ish rockers. Big renovations happening in this, the season when it’s fun to listen to music outdoors.

And I noticed Underground Printing has debranded Moe’s from its Main Street store, which previously had a UGP AND a Moe Sport Shops banner. MDen has been running the old Moe space on North U as basically a satellite MDen store for some time. I think the North U store is due to close soon, if it hasn’t already, since MDen already has a massive presence on State Street. Apparently you used to be able to buy actual sporting goods there, but I’m pretty sure that was before my time.

 

Drawing the Carpenter Target arc to a close: the changes are largely completed. I was in there a few days ago and found a few things out.

The new facade matches the modern design on Target’s blog, though without the second entrance they suggest will be the future of new stores – the area north of the entrance is probably going to be some kind of carside delivery area.

It was temporary restrooms when I last visited, while the front ones were being renovated — but I think online orders will be delivered to vehicles from there. These online orders could be shopped and prepared for curbside by Target team members, or by shoppers from SHIPT, the retail delivery firm that got a foothold in Detroit as a Meijer partner before being acquired by Target. So far it sounds like SHIPT shoppers in Detroit are still only getting Target orders for delivery to customer premises, though in some other markets they may receive offers to compile an order instore and then prepare it for pickup.

As a Target team member recently confirmed here on the blog, the Pizza Hut/Food Avenue restaurant is gone, leaving only the Starbucks counter. (The former photo lab has been converted to a seating area for Starbucks.)

The whole store in general seems a little less red and a little more light grey. There are more displays and fewer rows of shelves along the high-traffic corridors. You still have to walk past Literally Everything in the Known Universe to get to the grocery, though.

This is the end of Carpenter Target coverage for now, unless something really photoworthy happens — but if you aren’t sick of reading about Target yet, hit up this Fast Company article about the Mock Store on the third floor of Target HQ in Minnesota.

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Meanwhile, up the street at the Carpenter Road Kroger, they’re rolling out Scan-and-Go. Thanks friend of the blog Josh for this photo of the display:

This is intriguing to me. Stores like Sam’s Club and Apple have offered similar systems for years. As much as I eschew the U-Scans to seek out a real clerk, I would consider this some nights. I like being trusted, and it would make checkout a lot quicker, especially for just a couple of items. But I still use coupons often enough that I wouldn’t be ready to leave them behind. I STILL WANT 50 CENTS OFF THESE POP-TARTS, DANGIT.

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A few days back I made a remark about how Blockbuster Express offered DVD kiosks that were “like Redbox, but blue.” Turns out Redbox also has redboxes, but blue:

Like all vending machines in front of all Walmarts, the Redbox is blue, the better to match Walmart’s visual merchandising guidelines. Their social game is (fire emojis) too:

https://www.facebook.com/Walmart5472/photos/a.251772981591844.39330.108437899258687/1247020945400371/?type=3&theater

Also Walmart has a fashion cross-promotion with Lord & Taylor, formerly the snootiest store at Briarwood, now a subsidiary of Hudson’s Bay, the Oldest Firm in Canada.

And if you’ve ever wondered what the heck the mythical Platt Road location in Saline looks like, it’s actually a Walmart-managed pharmacy attached to a clinic inside the Toyota Technical Center, for Toyota employees. Walmart.com totally lets you use it as a pickup site for orders from their site, though! Are you are a Toyota employee who has purchased an item on Walmart.com, and chose pickup at the Walmart Pharmacy inside the Toyota Technical Center, to save yourself a drive to Walmart? You could be a guest on the A2 Retail Show! Get in touch with us here at 888-45-MAURY. Bonus: a free Paternity Test!

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This week while in Ohio I happened to catch a commercial for Circle K convenience stores that featured a modern store design that might give us a clue as to how the Stadium and Packard store will look when it’s completed.

I can’t find that commercial now, but I did happen across this walkthrough of a newly opened Circle K store in Ashtabula that probably contains strong indications of what the new Ann Arbor store will be like.

https://www.facebook.com/CircleKGreatLakes/videos/1803529169686581/

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Finally, if you are a longtime subscriber to the Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Nixle alerts system, the two frequent alerts that numbed you to its harbingers of doom probably included Fairfax Manor in Superior Township (an assisted living facility that managed to frequently lose its residents) and the old Bank of America branch at the Packard/Eisenhower gore point (a bank branch that was always gettin’ robbed). Bank of America left the building over a year ago, but recently major work has occurred within:

It appears that a clinic or dental office is coming to the space. If you look closely in the windows (not pictured) they are building many small rooms inside, likely to be exam rooms.

 

I made it to the movies this past weekend to see “The Incredibles 2” with my family. We’ve watched the original many, many, many times — the DVD has been a road tip fixture in each family vehicle. I still remember the first time I saw it in the theater, when it was released.

The photo above was taken about two years before I saw “The Incredibles.” I apparently packed a Negativland “Copyright Infringement” shirt for my honeymoon, in case you question my credibility.

I honestly can’t imagine how past-me would react if I could visit him now, ambling out of a cavernous AMC multiplex in Columbus, and confront him with these actual facts about the sequel:

• You’re gonna get three movies starring Owen Wilson as a talking racecar, four more Johnny Depp pirate movies, and twelve movies starring Marvel superheroes out of Disney, before they give you another Incredibles movie
• They’re gonna start the movie with a short live-action anti-piracy segment featuring Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, Samuel L. Jackson, and Brad Bird assuring you this film was worth waiting fourteen years for
• They’re gonna be right, it’s a fun movie and the action scenes make the first movie look like a Game Boy game, and it’s well worth the 3-D upcharge
• Oh yeah, 3-D is back in movie theaters again, though it’s already come and gone at home
• You will purchase the tickets by touching a glass rectangle that is also your telephone, at four in the morning, and choose your seats in the movie theater like you’re buying concert tickets
• The seats will be motorized La-Z-Boy styled recliners with discrete armrests
• You (Britain) will enjoy the film while drinking a zero-calorie version of Coca-Cola that you can still tell the difference between, but it’s close enough, especially if you mix in a couple ounces of regular Coke
• People are depicted conversing on landline telephones, cars look like sixties cars, and people watch television on picture-tube sets; but there are also flat panel displays and very modern-looking other kinds of vehicles, so I can’t exactly tell when this movie is actually supposed to take place

Anyway, in a nearer, more mundane future, I (and some friends of the site) caught glimpses of some future stuff that’s happening to places I’ve discussed recently.

While I was obsessively photographing the dramatic changes to the east side Target store, the west side Target was already getting some updates inside the store. The photo counter and Target Mobile section by the front door are now a Customer Service and Order Pickup desk.

The one checkout lane that was also a customer service desk is now a row of self-checkout stations, as have been appearing in newer Target stores.

And how about the store’s tiny, vertical CVS Pharmacy sign, set far away from the store entrance?

I believe it’s Target’s attempt to reconcile a contractual signage obligation with CVS, and the shopping center management’s restrictions on exterior signs.

In other news, Meijer stores on both sides of town have decommissioned the belt-drive U-Scan machines, encouraged for shoppers with 12-items-plus orders, and replaced the lanes with a mix of the smaller U-Scan machines intended for U12 orders and staffed checkout lanes.

This decision is welcomed by people who view self-checkout as robbing a human of a wage-earning position, this writer included. But to be frank, it’s not an improvement to put more humans at these lanes if they don’t know how to bag groceries. I always group like items on the belt — milk with yogurt, beef with bacon, Dranō with “Mountain Dew Pitch Black.” But I think sometimes the cashiers are taught to place items in the bags to fill them and use fewer bags.

Bags are probably a major consumable expense for grocery stores and this kind of efficiency is probably welcomed in areas where the bags carry a surcharge. Thanks to Lansing, though, Ann Arbor isn’t one of those places, and I swear to you, nary a plastic shopping bag goes to waste in our household. (We have pets, enough said.) Don’t crush my delicate beer with a bag of dinner rolls!

I think this blog was first, and only so far, to report the changes at Speedway on State and Ellsworth. The signs are up all around town at other Speedway stores, looking for employees to staff the new Speedy Cafe. (They may have their work cut out for them.)

Late last week I visited the store and encountered employees and contractors hard at work emptying the shelves and racks during the morning drive time. I was too shy to take a photo then, but A2RS friend Pete was not:

At the time these photos were taken last weekend, Pete reports, the store was out of “most pop flavors and all straws.” I haven’t been by since then to see what it’s like now, but apparently the store will stay open throughout the project to sell gasoline and smokes.

The other day I was so excited about the big Target Reno on Carpenter Road, that I forgot to take note of a couple of other changes there.

Babies “R” Us has completed its liquidation sale. Soon its facade will be just as bare as its sister store’s labelscarred front on Washtenaw, as seen below. Some TRU stores in other areas of the United States are expected to remain open until midsummer.

TRU Canada will remain in business following its sale to a Canadian bank. The nearest location is in Windsor, across the street from Devonshire Mall, so get your Enhanced Driver’s License ASAP. It’s not too much to pay too late! (I said that wrong.)

On the other hand, it seems possible that Kay-Bee Toys will be back in malls for the holiday shopping season. The IP firm that holds the KB trademark (and has reintroduced Bonkers Fruit Chews and Hydrox Cookies) is hoping to start with 1000 stores across the country this holiday season, then negotiating leases and maintaining the best performers beyond the holiday.

Mattress Firm also showed up in the outlot building where Pier 1 used to be. (This Firm store opened nearly at the same time as its sister store on Eisenhower. That location’s former tenant, Old Carolina BBQ, was one of the first locations I wrote about here.) I don’t know what it is with mattress stores, it seems like a very volatile business always on the verge of being eaten by those foam-mattress companies that ship you one all smooshed up. But I guess if you’re good the rewards are worth it. Like, I don’t know, nearly all businesses.

The AT&T franchise moved out from next-to-Target to that outlot building as well, surprise surprise. I hope this leads to an expansion for Fun4All, purveyor of fine board and card games, among many other items.

Also, up Carpenter Road, UMCU is building a brand new bank branch next door to the Regent Hotel. This is a big improvement, because UMCU’s presence on the east side has been a little weak. I think they gained a branch in central Ypsilanti when they acquired the EMU Credit Union, and I sometimes use the CU Family Service Center at Glencoe for deposits, when I want to hand my checks and bills to a real person. But it’ll be nice to have a proper branch out this way.

Mast Shoes at Westgate is more than doubling in size. It’s nice to see a local, family-owned store expand in a healthy way. I don’t exactly recall what was here before Mast took it over, but I’m pretty sure it was “Hit or Miss” or another women’s chain clothing store. Avenue? Bueller?

The Speedway at State and Ellsworth was looking remarkably spacious today. Many of the shelves (including the Arctic Coke machine) were empty, and most of Speedway’s free-standing waist-level coolers near the checkout line — the ones that say “here’s a couple bottles of Dew and/or a 24oz can of malt liquor, you know, FOR THE ROAD” — were not on the Plano. The clerk told me that the store was about to undergo a renovation, but that the side with the registers would remain open throughout. She also assured me that I would still be able to get to the soda pop fountain.

This Speedway building barely opened a couple of years ago, maybe three at the latest. That development was a refresh of a site Speedway originally took over from Total Petroleum of France decades ago — it doubled the number of pumps and introduced a brand new store building. It’s already very modern by Speedway standards. So I reckon it’s going to get the ready-to-eat selection (like Sheetz and Wawa, popular regional fuel station chains that offer prepared sandwiches) that more Speedways near a highway are starting to get. (EDIT 9:30AM: Confirmed by another clerk!) Examples nearby of this concept include US-23 and M-59 in Hartland; off US-23 in Dundee near Cabela’s; and the Merriman Road Speedway, just across I-94 from Metro Airport.

Finally: guess what, suckers, I have A Source and they told me that the former gas station site on Stadium between Burger King and HotPot Chen — I mean, Ponderosa — is going to be an office building, so I don’t know where you’re gonna get your Kerosene now.

The Target store on Carpenter Road is getting a significant refreshing. It got a minor upgrade a few years ago, to move the electronics to the back of the store and introduce the expanded grocery, but it looks like bigger stuff is happening. Now that I think about it, the roadside signage that was updated over the winter was probably an early clue:

The new sign emphasized the Target logo but lower-cased the name. This is consistent with Target’s current visual identity, but not with anything at the existing Carpenter location. That appears set to change, since a big chunk of the parking lot is now fenced off and filled with shipping containers.

For my money, the coolest use of shipping containers is still Flynn’s house on the dock in the movie “Tron Legacy.” But that’s been covered to death in other blogs, so let’s get back to the retail.

That square patch is almost certainly going to be a larger bullseye logo, probably with “Target” below it, as seen in other more recently built Target locations.

Here’s the most exciting prospect: I think this will take advantage of the seldom-used parking in this stretch of the shopping center and become a second entrance to the Target store. Although other markets have had giant-size Target stores with two entrances for years — the closest local example I can think of is the Coolidge Road store in Troy — Target announced a new store concept at a conference a year ago in which one entrance would maintain the typical “come in for three things and walk out with fifty things” that people love about Target, but the other entrance would be a convenience entrance where you can pick up an online order or get just, like, a gallon of milk. The grocery is so far from the current entrance right now that the bananas are 39 cents a pound, but if you pay an extra $20, you can receive a medal and a souvenir moisture-wicking t-shirt.

They’re also doing something with the little food place up front. Hard to say what this will entail, but more recent Target locations in other areas group the Starbucks counter with the ready-to-eat meals counter and also include a seating area with natural light.  Here’s what it looked like before, as seen at a very similar location in Mansfield, Ohio:

And here’s what a more modern storefront looks like. The windows below the Target sign help bring natural light into the seating area:

Can we anticipate this here? I think that would be nice. For now, the Starbucks counter remains open in its current spot on the other side of the entrance, and will not close for the day on May 29 as corporate-owned Starbucks stores are slated to do.

That was more than I expected to write about this. I tend to forget than nearly any chain store you ever really liked has a Flickr pool devoted to it and it was good to draw on that for a couple of the Target shots.

The original Ann Arbor Target store, which opened like thirty years ago at Oak Valley Shopping Center on Saline Road, has a new roadside sign that’s JUST THE LOGO with NO LETTERS (sorry, no photo at the moment), so I can’t wait to see how they subvert the common storefront language Oak Valley has had since its inception.

Finally, many Ann Arbor downtown dwellers continue to hold out hope that Target will try its flexible-format concept in a space near them. Where is there available space that could hold even this, though?

 

Exciting news: I am speaking at Penguicon 2018, in Southfield, MI, at the Westin Southfield-Detroit, on May 4 at 6pm. I am happy to sign printouts of various posts, or the entire website, following the talk and throughout the weekend. Please bring your own printout, I will try to carry pens.

If you happened to make it to Nerd Nite A2 last summer at LIVE, this talk will be similar to that one, but since I am not sharing the evening with two much smarter scientists, I will read an additional post, and pause for questions. (Also, if this is like my last talk at Penguicon a couple of years ago, a few guys in the audience who know more than me will politely correct me throughout the hour… who am I kidding? Nobody knows more than me about A2RS.)

If the time slot seems significant to you, it is because the Penguicon opening ceremonies will be happening in another room at the same time. I implore you to attend my talk instead, and skip the opening ceremonies. In fact, skip the entire event, it peaked a few years ago and has been getting more and more corporate ever since. If you don’t believe me, get there at 4:30 and try to find a good spot for the Penguicon Opening Ceremonies, hosted by Chris Hardwick on the Bud Light Lime Stage*.

Seriously though, come see me at 6pm in the Nicolet Room. And if you can’t make it, check out my slides on the Penguicon web site after the conference.

*this is not actually true

You may recall that English Gardens closed after the holiday season. If you don’t, there’s a lot of stuff about it on Mlive and other reputable sources. My previous article had a number of exterior shots of former Frank’s stores, but A3RS never had a cutaway view… until this weekend:

The fence is there for our protection, but there’s a gap just big enough to squeeze an arm through and shoot a pano:

The east portion of the lot is where Hardee’s was when we were young, later Golden Chef. At one point I think this was going to be a Tim Horton’s but that never came to fruition (but Timmy’s isn’t a fruit place, it’s a donut shop — so, it never came to donution?).

Now, maybe you think I anthropomorphize inanimate objects too often — and this too-smart-for-its-own-good computer I’m typing on would probably agree with you — but the Westgate sign popping over the wall like a noisy neighbor in the below shot just slays me every time.

As a freestanding garden center comes down, the site of the former Kmart’s garden center is now being built upon with something else, as though the HomeGoods on Kmart’s site was born with a phantom limb and is now making the curious sensation real:

What do I think is going in here? Well there’s no AT&T store at Maple Village yet and there’s a shopping center on the east side with TWO AT&T stores. So that’s, I would say, a shoo-in.

You know what this shopping center DOES have though? Johnny Leggs is in the house:

I imagine it’s only a matter of time before the other outlot building gets a makeover to match the above building’s aesthetic:

This space below — formerly Village Pharmacy — looks ready to put something in. I don’t know what. I would suggest a Kirkland’s, but that’s literally next door already.

A Secretary of State office and a self-storage complex continue to operate at the back of the shopping center, and Plum Market is well into its second decade up front. One of these days I’ll finish the post I began a while back, about the movie theater that used to be here.

The temporary wall is up at the old Pearle. I anticipated an expansion last week, and I was correct. But not the expansion I anticipated. The Apple Store will still be minuscule. Instead, it’s the neighbor on the other side, the M Den, that’s expanding.

If you’ve visited the flagship M Den on State Street, you have probably wandered into its upscale storefront, The Victors Collection. Maybe even on purpose. Victors eschews Jordan, Champion, and the other mass-market sportswear brands that the M Den moves, to stock business-casual and semi-formal apparel with the block M, along with Wall Street-y specialty items like a ballcap with both the Block-M and the New York Yankees logos. So basically the aesthetic I hope to maintain once I get the big check, and A2RS joins Maxim Magazine and Steak-N-Shake in the Biglari portfolio.

Speaking of spiritwear,  the corner across from the Big House is still open and seems like an obvious choice for a U-M apparel shop to me…

[table id=1 /]

But I wouldn’t bet on A2RS’ predictions. Anyway, this site was previously a Sprint authorized retailer. Before that it was an art studio that hosted parties, and before that it was Schneider’s Amoco:

(…who later dropped the gasoline sales and became Schneider’s Party Store, where I bought glass bottles of soda while waiting for my transfer school-bus home.)

Speaking of things that have sat empty for a long time, the Burger Fi restaurant on the ground floor of University Towers is still preserved in time and now there’s an investigative podcast about it. It’s called BurgerFIND, it’s produced by a group of U-M students who still mourn its closing, and it’s a lot like “Missing Richard Simmons,” only this time, THE HOSTS are the ones who wear pajamas in the daytime.

Speaking of mysteries, Aunt Agatha’s recently announced its closure at the end of the summer. They are offloading their inventory and moving online. They are closing up in the face of downloads. They are selling The Big Sleep from a storefront that never closes.

Unique stores like this help us feel better about our community and we are sorry to see them go. At least it isn’t sudden, they will be around through Art Fair, the union electricians’ training, and I think the union plumbers/pipe-fitters’ training too. I would love to see the pipe-fitters/mystery buffs Venn diagram.

Speaking of bookstores, there is a new used bookstore opening on Ellsworth. This isn’t exactly Ann Arbor, but enough friends of the blog have commented on this (and also I recently did a post about Utah, so clearly I don’t care that much) that I want to mention Think Outside The Books, which also offers games, collectibles, and many photos like this one below, which together document the store’s genesis from the shell of a Blockbuster.

https://www.facebook.com/thinkoutsidethebooks/photos/a.450864265037822.1073741830.340465736077676/651680488289531/?type=3&theater

Speaking of busted blocks, here’s Fourth Avenue between Washington and Liberty, where only the Ann Arbor Comedy Showcase is able to thrive.

Speaking of nightlife, there’s a DJ coming to Packard and Platt. DJ Bakery. That’s literally all I know right now.

This site was most recently a dealer of leaf guards for residential gutters. Before that, it was a laundromat and Craft Appliance, a beloved, locally-owned appliance store.

Speaking of local craft, Lucky’s Market has a bar with four or five local or regionally-brewed beers for $2 a pint every day ($1.50 on Thursdays).

They also sell slices of pizza, and other various hot entrees on different days. The deli section of Lucky’s is not exactly Bill’s-Beer-Garden level ambience, but you can’t beat the price, and you can actually hold a conversation in there, unlike many popular watering holes.

Speaking of watering holes, back to Fourth Street for a second. Here’s a look inside the window of the ground floor of Courthouse Square Senior Apartments, formerly the Ann Arbor Inn. Looks like fresh beer is coming. Hopefully this will raise the boats of extant Arbor Brewing, Haymaker, and Blue Tractor, all nearby.