Little Ghost fast casual burger restaurant in Ferndale.
Several years ago I was chatting with the owners of a Ferndale business about the party store next door that was winding down operations after decades of being open. I had never been a regular customer, but it was the closest place to buy beer, and I had hoped someone would acquire its packaged to-go liquor license, fix the place up a bit and upgrade its selection. After all, the store had prime Woodward Avenue frontage, and the neighborhood was underserved by good local retail.
I said as much to the men at the business that was remaining open, who seemed unconvinced. “There’s no parking,” one of them groused.
I pointed out the many curbside spaces directly out front along Woodward, and I brought up another party store a mile up the road with the same parking setup.
“Yeah, but they have parking in the rear,” the man said. And it’s true: The liquor store in question, which remains open to this day, boasts two or three parking spaces for customers in the alley behind the store. Somehow I doubt they make much of a difference, since it’s usually easy enough to find a parking spot directly in front of the store while zipping down Woodward.
My point in sharing this story is that Detroit — like many places in America, but especially in the Motor City — remains locked in a car-brained belief that the success of any commercial retail venture hinges on abundant parking spaces. There has been a major kerfuffle in Ferndale over Vester Flats, a mixed-use, multi-story residential building that is now taking shape on the site of a former large surface parking lot that sat empty most of the week. Two neighboring businesses sued the city over it, claiming among other things that the loss of parking would be devastating.
We remain stuck in a mentality that favors pockmarking our communities with vast, impermeable parking lots that sit empty for much of the time, look terrible and drain our cities of economic vitality and street life. It’s estimated there are eight parking spaces for every car in the U.S., and parking lots on average consume a third of all land area in American cities. It has been astounding to see how many people insist that doing away with a parking lot while adding density and more residents will mean the death of local businesses.
Which brings me to Little Ghost.
How’s the Burger?
Clearly this isn’t a restaurant review. (Yes, that subhead above is a nakedly attempt at getting clicks from the AI machines — SUE ME. I’m chasing fame and fortune here.) While my kids tell me it’s good, I’m not a burger guy. I probably groaned when I heard we were getting yet another burger joint, since I believe we need to consume far less beef if we have any hope of not cooking our planet to a crisp. Not that anyone asked.
Yet I’m happy Little Ghost is there. My wife and I both love seeing its purple neon sign glowing against the dark, tree-lined street, its smiley-faced burger ghost mascot and its walk-up take-out window, one of the few positive legacies of the pandemic for restaurants.
Little Ghost opened in August in what had been a nondescript insurance office where I rarely saw any actual people. It’s on the far end of a block shared with the First United Methodist Church, next to an open grassy lot where we used to buy our Christmas trees. The building itself is tiny, perhaps 500 square feet — and critically, there is no parking lot directly adjacent the store for customers. In fact, when the news broke that the owners of Detroit’s celebrated Grey Ghost were opening a hamburger outpost there, even I was initially skeptical they could make it work. Where would people park?
And yet, Little Ghost appears to be doing gangbuster business, with lines out the door many nights, people dining at picnic tables out front, and plenty of curbside parking. It’s the latest in new businesses opening off the beaten path in Ferndale.
The southern end of Woodward in Ferndale has long been the domain of car dealerships (read: parking lots), fast food drive-thrus and cemeteries. Now, suddenly, there is foot traffic on the street, a popular business integrated into the neighborhood. You could walk or bike to it if you wanted, and that’s what we love about it. It’s not a restaurant surrounded by a big empty parking lot when the lights aren’t on. It lends a sense of place to its immediate environment.
So, welcome to town, Little Ghost (order from them here). Your presence is a rejoinder to those who insist that removing parking will hurt business vitality, and I hope it is the start of more businesses in the area.
Great Ghost-post!