The garage-door facade of Pop’s For Italian, one of several new businesses opening soon in Ferndale.
Related: Downtown Ferndale needs more office and residential, new DDA director says
A spate of new businesses, including an organic beer and kombucha brewery and several restaurants, are set to open up shop in Ferndale in the coming months. Many of them will take over vacant storefronts along Nine Mile Road downtown.
The City Council earlier this month gave the green light to Urbanrest Brewing Co. The owners, Zach and Mary Typinski, and their business partners plan to brew Belgian-style farmhouse beers from an industrial facility at 2615 Wolcott Street using repurposed dairy tanks sourced from Michigan’s rural Thumb. Plans call for producing 350 barrels during the first year using hops from an organic garden the team operates in nearby Center Line.
Urbanrest will share the building, a former paint filter manufacturing facility, with another tenant. It will have a 63-seat tasting room for visitors and use of the parking lot.
The business raised nearly $30,000 from a Kickstarter campaign and hopes to open in the spring.
Back in the downtown business district, the opening date appears to be drawing near for Pops For Italian, a new concept from the owners of One-Eyed Betty’s. The inside appeared to be fully furnished during a recent peek through the opaque garage doors, pictured above. Also planned is The Daily Dinette, a 24-hour casual eatery behind Pop’s and accessible from the public parking lot.
The two restaurants are taking over the spaces formerly occupied by Buffalo Wild Wings and the Twisted Shamrock gift store.
A sign in the window of The Conserva.
A few storefronts west, at 310 W. Nine Mile, chef Matt Baldridge and partners are building The Conserva in a narrow former retail space. Baldridge has had starring roles in the kitchens at The Rattlesnake Club, Cliff Bell’s and Seldom Blues in Detroit, and he more recently hosted the Dinner Club Pop Up events at the Store Front Gallery on Marshall Street.
From The Conserva’s website:
The idea is a comfortable space with an extensive and complex wine and beer menu. You will order at the bar and pick a kind of fresh baked bread or crostini and then choose a combination of creativly prepared meats and seafoods, pickled vegetables, fresh made mustards, and aiolis. The food is delivered in jars, which are prepared using the Italian process called conserva.
The restaurant’s Facebook page last month posted this update:
The tin ceiling is done and looks beautiful, walls are painted and ready for art, and the floor is almost done. We are so close!
Two retail businesses also plan to open:
- Smooth Vapes, at 214 W. Nine Mile
- and Union Barber, which promises “close cuts & straight shaves,” at 212, right next door.
There’s also been activity at the Shoppes @ Cambourne, a new spec retail building on the site of the former Pizza Hut on Woodward Avenue at Cambourne that I wrote about a few months ago.
There, developers have signed AT&T and Jersey Mike’s Subs to the middle two of the four storefronts. The asking rate was $35 per square foot, triple net. The businesses hope to be open by late spring or early summer, said Corbin Yaldoo of CMP Real Estate Group.
Across Cambourne Street, an Art Van PureSleep Mattress Store will take over the 6,500 square-foot former home of Hodge’s Subaru. That property’s asking lease rate was $25 per square foot, triple net.
Update: I realized there are other new businesses set to open soon:
- Otus Supply, a 200-seat “Great Lakes gastropub” from the owners of Toast that is taking shape following months of construction at 345 E. Nine Mile
- Southern Belles’ Bistro, next to Essential Massage on Woodward
- And Anytime Fitness, a 24-hour gym, on the west side of Woodward next to Inyo.
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