Anyone who has taken the time over the past 33 years to drop in and visit Steven Bernard Jewelers in Dearborn knows that when it comes to finding a one-of-a-kind gift Steven’s shop on Michigan Avenue is the place to go.

Now Steven Bernard Jewelers is providing residents another reason to drop into this store at 22266 Michigan Ave. Called “coupons for coats”, the jewelry store through Dec. 31 will be collecting new and gently used winter coats, which will be distributed by the First United Methodist Church of Dearborn.

Bernard says he established “Coupons for Coats” to support those in need in our community. In exchange for a coat, Steven Bernard Jewelers will give participants a 20 percent discount coupon that can be used in his jewelry store, located just east of Military throughout December.

Steven Bernard Jewelers is open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday; 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Thursdays and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturdays. Starting Nov. 29 the store will be open noon to 4 p.m. on Sundays for the holidays. For more information, call 313-562-8484.

Closed for more than nine months, the Dunkin’ Donuts shop on Michigan Avenue, just west of Telegraph appears to be on the verge of reopening.

Dearborn's Dunkin' Donuts, covered and closed in this photo, is now on the verge of reopening.

The plastic that once covered the windows and sign of the building has all been removed.

A sign on the door to the building says it will soon reopen and that it is now taking applications.

We’re not certain why it closed in the first place but we’re happy to see that it is reopening and hopefully with friendlier drive-thru service than the first time around.

Dearborn’s Bistro 222, a fresh little restaurant that offers the niceties of linens, fresh flowers and tasteful place settings, is now able to serve wine with its fine meals.

Bistro 222, chef/proprietor Michael Chamas’s gem of a restaurant on 22266 Michigan Avenue now has the proper liquor license to fill the wine racks that he had built into his restaurant when he first opened. The racks will hold the personal selections of many of his regulars.

He began serving wine just this week after suffering through a long,  bureaucratic process to get the needed approvals.

“It was amazing what we went through to be able to do this but the response has been overwhelming,” Mr. Chamas said. “The wine is a nice compliment to the food we offer. We also will offer some select beers.”

While we have been a huge fan of Bistro 222 with or without the wine, this new addition should help bring in new customers to this intimate 60-seat place – a standout on the commercial strip of Michigan Avenue. The building is owned by Hakim Fakoury.

Card Shop Business Doing Well and Will Remain in Building

The Dee’s Hallmark building, home of the best card shop in Dearborn, is now on the sales block for $640,000. But the card shop itself will be staying for the foreseeable future, according to the shop’s owner, Don Belcher.

“Blessings to all my loyal friends who have shopped Dee’s for the past 25 years. I am saddened by the recent confusion concerning the future of Dee’s Hallmark. The last thing I need is for people to think I’m willingly going out of business. Hopefully I can help clarify some of the misconceptions. I opened for business in November of 1985 and shortly after the first holiday season I knew this would be my home for years to come. I loved the community and it’s residents who soon became my friends. I expressed my sentiments to the owners of the building, who are great people, and asked if they would like to sell. They told me they were not interested at the time but if and when they were I would have first opportunity. True to their word they did just that which was October of last year. Unfortunately after the many years of struggle I was painfully not in a position financially to buy the building I always dreamed of owning. My commitment to survival has always been strong but after closing (3) other stores and using the money to keep Dee’s going there was not enough left to take them up on their offer, which brings us to the present. It is common knowledge that this is not the best time to sell commercial property as evidenced by the many vacancies in our area. However should it sell I will make every effort to negotiate a favorable lease agreement with the new owner. If that is not possible I will look to relocate as close to my current location as I can. A smarter man would have given up long ago I think I’m just to dumb to know when it’s time to quit!!!! With that said I hope this clears up any notion that after all I’ve been through that I would leave a community that I feel as close to as family I have worked with mothers/children /and grandchildren and I cherish those memories. Trust me I will not leave easy as long as you want me here. Peace and God Bless.”

With so little retail in west Dearborn, we are hopeful Mr. Belecher will be able to keep his card shop at 22283 Michigan Ave., for many years to come.

The building, built in 1967, went on the sales block at the end of October for $640,000. The 4,261 square-foot building also can be leased for $15 a sq.-ft for a lease payment of $5,326 a month.

A few interesting documents worth looking at from Signature Associates, who is listing the property. One document takes a look at the demographics of our region and household income within a one, three and five mile radius. As you can image it goes down the father you go out of the circle. For a look at that document, click HERE.

A second document lists the full demographic profile, looking at a one, three and five mile radius. Click HERE for that document.

Finally, a third document from the real estate company says this in the comments section of the listing:  “Outstanding retail opportunity in downtown west Dearborn. Long established retail business vacating this building located in the hub of Dearborn’s retail district directly across the street from two new parking decks. Total taxes for 2008 were $10,969.58. Special assessment for 2008 ($616.90) is year 6 of 10.” To view this, click HERE.

With the Mercury and the Little Café all but a distant memory on the stretch of Michigan between Military and Brady, Panera Bread at the corner of Howard has fast become the new neighborhood gathering place.

Dearborn's Panera Bread at Michigan and Howard has fast become the new neighborhood gathering place.

While pricier than the two closed homegrown establishments, we’d say that Panera offers some high quality food, good coffee and free Wi-Fi. And that appears to be the secret to its success. We miss being able to get a good omelet, hash browns and toast from the home-owned restaurants in West Dearborn but we are glad to at least have a place to go.

An article in the October issue of Fast Company magazine says that that the St. Louis-based Panera is opening a new bakery-café every five days. Sales were up 16.2 percent in 2008 and profits in the first half of this year were up 33 percent, according to the article.

Some other excerpts from the article:

“Panera is proof that, in suburbia, there’s a hunger for real food — unfussy ingredients moved from farm to plate quickly and affordably. And the company has combined that menu with an unpretentious atmosphere — there’s no table service, but also no time limit. As a result, it has become as much community gathering space as a bustling lunch spot . . .

“ . . . Panera’s target audience is more Food Network than fast food. “We hit a chord with people who understand and respond to food, but we also open a door for people who are on the verge of that,” says chief concept officer Scott Davis. “We run an idea through the Panera filter and give it that twist that takes a flavor profile closer to what you’d find in a bistro than a fast-food joint . . .”

“. . . the $4.3 billion bakery-café segment is a growth sector, and even with more than 1,300 locations, Panera still has plenty of room to grow. As the dominant player in the market — add up the sales for the next four biggest bakery-café chains, including Einstein Bros. Bagels and Corner Bakery Cafe, and they’d still have less than half of Panera’s sales — it’s in the best position to capitalize on the potential of bakery-cafés in the broader restaurant business. That means there’s plenty for Panera to eat up — including its competitors’ lunch.”

The full article can be found here.

Les Stanford Chevy Dealership to Expand, Occupy Flower Market Site

After nearly 47 years of doing business at the northeast corner of Michigan and Oakwood, Westborn Flower is moving across the street into the Westborn Market following a failed court fight to purchase the building and stay in its current location.

The flower shop will then be torn down to make way for the expansion of the Les Standford Chevy dealership for one whole city block of new cars and trucks.

Westborn owner Mark Anusbigian and his family were forced to incorporate the flower shop directly into his Westborn Market after failing to land a deal with the Koustas family, which owned the building and apparently didn’t want to sell to Anusbigian.

The Westborn Flower Market will relocate into a new addition being built onto the Westborn Market, located directly across the street.

Anusbigian had hoped to purchase the building of the current flower shop and remodel it for a more modern-looking flower store. While we are sad to see the old store go, we are very happy to see that the flower shop will at least remain, moving under the same roof as the Westborn Market.

Longtime Dearbornites will recall that the Westborn Market once occupied the site of what is now the Westborn Flower Market before moving to its current location. The Anusbigian family opened the market in 1963 and for the first 20 years leased from Tony Koustas on a — believe it or not — month-to-month basis. The last lease deal Anusbigian had – a 25-year one – expired in June 2007.

In that lease deal was a clause that essentially said Anusbigian had the first right of purchase if Koustas ever decided to sell. Apparently when the lease ended, Koustas felt all bets were off and decided to sell to Stanford. That landed the Anusbigian and Koustas families in court.

In the end, Stanford purchased the building from the Koustas family. But Koustas didn’t own the entire piece of land used for parking. That belonged to the Anusbigian family, who also owned the property to the east of the flower shop where the former Powers Hamburgers used to be on Michigan Avenue.

So Stanford and Anusbigian worked out a deal where a portion of Stanford’s property behind the Westborn Market will go over to Anusbigian and the market.

Westborn Market will need the land for additional parking as the new 8,000 foot expansion for the flower shop will require taking several parking spaces along the eastside face of the store. The expansion is expected to be completed by year’s end.

Designing such a floor plan shouldn’t be an issue for the Anusbigian family. They have successfully done this in their Berkley and Livonia Westborn Market locations.

“This will provide much greater convenience for our customers who are seeking a ‘one-stop shop’,” Anusbigian said in a company issued press release. “We’ll have a full-service florist with wedding design services, ready made and custom made floral arrangements, bouquets, giftware, fresh cut flowers, gift baskets, delivery service and more.”

Anusbigian says the architecture for the expansion will be a sleek design of glass and steel with a clean industrial feel. Customers will still have the same easy access to parking from both Michigan Avenue and Oakwood Boulevard.

“There’s never been a better opportunity to demonstrate our confidence in Dearborn and in Michigan than during these difficult times,” Anusbigian said. “We are decidedly optimistic.”

We are, too. We wish the best to the new Westborn Market and Flower Shop.

The Blockbuster store at 22914 Michigan in Dearborn is closing.

Dearborn’s Blockbuster video store on Michigan Avenue in west Dearborn is closing its doors, one of the nearly 960 stores the Dallas-based company plans to close by end of 2010.

Struggling against stiff competition form Netflix and Redbox, the video rental chain is shrinking its operations by more than 20 percent to save money and keep its lenders happy.

The move to close the west Dearborn store at 22914 Michigan, just down from Kroger in the strip mall located on the north side of Michigan at Nowlin, really shouldn’t come as a surprise. Most people these days either don’t have time for videos or simply are using Netflix, pay-for-view or checking them out for free at the library. Combine that with prices that continue to drop to purchase movie DVDs and the future doesn’t look so bright for the video rental company.

What will move into this large vacant space is anyone’s guess but it will bring to at least three the number of vacancies in this strip mall, which has plenty of free parking.

A new restaurant/lounge appears to be headed into the former Venue nightclub building.

Just east of the closing Blockbuster about four blocks away on the same side of the street, it appears a new restaurant/lounge could be moving into the building that once housed the Venue nightclub.

A sign in the window at the rear of the building, located at 22048 Michigan near Monroe, simply says it is “coming soon”.

Just what length of time applies to the word “soon” is anyone’s guess.

The definition of “soon” has been a rather nebulous one at Norm Newman’s vacant Inca and Pier 1 building where a sign has been promising a “redevelopment” since February. Same is true of the Fatburger sign promising “coming soon” on Hakim Fakhoury’s building at Military and Michigan.

Even so, we will gladly take a “coming soon” sign in a window over an empty one any day of the week, regardless of how squishy the word might be. The “soon” at least represents hope and west Dearborn needs a bit of that right now.

The station should be removed in a couple of weeks.

Demolition work has begun to remove a long-vacant service station at the corner of Military and Cherry Hill, clearing the way for construction of a new single story medical office building.

Owner Tarick Seifeddine says after the station comes down a rendering of the new building will go up as a way to advertise the new one-story office facililty that will be built there. Construction on the new building is expected to begin in the first half of next year. 

A rendering of the new office building planned at the corner of Cherry Hill and Military.

One of the challenges at the site involved AT&T’s decision to install its refrigerator-sized new video boxes (known as U-verse boxes) in the middle of Seifeddine’s planned parking lot driveway entrance to the new building.

Following an earlier article on Deepsaidwhat about the boxes, AT&T contacted Seifeddine to determine if something could be worked out.   

“We had some progress with AT&T, including the involvement of city lawyers,” Seifeddine said. “An issue came up that if we were to pursue a forceful and court approved relocation of the boxes that after is all is said and done it could take about 18 plus months to actually have it happen and that is something we simply cannot do.”

AT&T has relocated boxes on some occasions following court orders, including one location in Dearborn, but as Seifeddine says, the process is a long one.

Instead, Seifeddine said the new building will move about four feet towards Military, which still meets city ordinances, and will provide even more landscaping to neighbors.  The design of the driveway closest to the boxes will now become one-way, he said.

The demolition of the gas station will certainly improve the aesthetics of the neighborhood. The gas station has been closed since October 1997. For that earlier story, click HERE.

With the Village Picture Frame and Art Gallery moving from its location on Monroe west two blocks to a new home on Michigan Avenue, we thought it was a good time to provide a brief update on other businesses opening, reopening or just plain stalled in downtown west Dearborn.

Let’s start with Ristorante Ciao. Closed since an April fire hit the popular Italian eatery, the restaurant’s owners told us this week that they plan to reopen this year. However, it may not reopen in the current location but in a new building located in west Dearborn. Challenges apparently remain over whose insurance company should cover damages to the building, the restaurant owner or the building landlord. Whatever the matter, we just hope they reopen soon. It has always been one of our favorite Italian restaurants in town.

Say goodbye to Parisian Bistro and hello to Bora Bora. The new restaurant and nightclub could open as early as Nov. 1, according to banners hanging outside the building that once housed the Salad Bar restaurant. The Dearborn location would be the second restaurant for this family-owned establishment. The first Bora Bora opened in Novi about two years ago and has been a huge success in that city. The owners tell us the restaurant/bar will be open for lunch and dinner beginning at 11 a.m. daily. On Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, the restaurant will feature a more nightclub atmosphere. We welcome the new restaurant to the neighborhood and wish them the best of luck.

A new martini bar also is said to be moving into the location that once housed Caribou Coffee in the West Village Commons development on Michigan Avenue. We don’t have full details yet, but the bar would join The Well pub and La Cigar in the Burton-Katzman project.

Finally, we have received dozens of emails asking for the outcome on the bench trial to settle a dispute between Caliente Grille restaurant co-owner Jeremy Sutton and Gateway Plaza developer Hakim Fakhoury. Dozens of hours of testimony have taken place so far over a period of nearly three months but there still is no resolution. We ran into Dearborn 19th District Court Judge Mark Somers the other day, who is hearing the case, and he tells us the trial will continue into November. In addition to this trial, Judge Somers has a full docket of other cases he must handle on a daily basis. Fakhoury is trying to evict the restaurant and its owners, claiming they failed to move forward with their restaurant. Sutton is countersuing, claiming breach of contract. The restaurant is located at Michigan and Military.

Hoping to attract more walk-by customers, one of Dearborn’s best known picture framing and art gallery stores is moving its operations into the West Village Commons on Michigan Avenue.

Tom Clark, owner of Village Picture Frame and Art Gallery, packs a trailer for his move from Monroe Street into the West Village Commons.

After 25 years at 1026 Monroe, just south of Michigan, Village Picture Frame and Art Gallery is packing up and moving into Burton-Katzman’s West Village Commons development, about two blocks west of its current location. Owner Tom Clark says his new Dearborn store location, next door to the closed Au Bon Pain, should be open in mid-November.

“Economics is what is prompting our move,” Clark said. “We lost a lot of workers from Ford. These were our customers. Then the restaurants around us went down one-by-one and we lost walk-by people. The bridal shop, Weight Watchers, the Salad Bar then Ciao, these businesses brought me customers, especially Ciao.”

In his new store, Clark says he is paying about half the rent of his former location and with better visibility. Businesses already in the West Village Commons includes The Well bar, a UPS store, Kabuki restaurant, La Cigar, Maestro’s Restaurant, Cold Stone Creamery and Sattva Yoga. A new martini bar also is said to be moving into the location that once housed Caribou Coffee.

It is a diverse group of businesses that will at least bring some foot traffic by Clark’s store. In turn, his new store could bring business to the other shops already there, too, and possibly attract other businesses to move into the development, which still has many vacancies.

Dearborn's Village Picture Frame and Art Gallery opens here in November.

“I hope to reopen by the middle of November,” said Clark, a 1969 Dearborn High School grad, who serves as a board member of the West Dearborn Downtown Development Authority and the Dearborn Animal Shelter. “We will be moving my workroom into my new location this week. I am still servicing my clients while the move is taking place.”

As for the parking situation, Clark says he plans to validate parking passes for his customers. Being as close as his new store will be to the city’s two paid parking decks and with paid meters directly outside his door, Clark sees it as an opportunity. “I’ll provide quarters to park if that’s what it takes.”

Clark’s previous location was tastefully decorated with a great selection of many one-of-a-kind pictures, jewelry and artwork. It is the kind of retail store that makes Dearborn feel special, just as Steven Bernard Jewelers, Nichols Ski and Patio, Dearborn Music, Nigosian’s oriental rugs and Bikesport, to name some, do along the stretch of Michigan between Brady and Military. Clark says his new store will continue in that same tradition.

Despite how bleak things look now, West Village Commons won’t stay vacant forever. In his new location, Clark will have a lot more foot traffic than he is seeing today. And with the right eye candy in the display window that even eastbound traffic on Michigan could see should mean more business, which would be a good thing for him and for Dearborn retail in general.