What’s in a name? The owners reopening a restaurant on Dearborn’s east side will soon find out.

In the same building that started the La Shish restaurant chain in 1989 and helped popularize Middle Eastern cuisine in metro Detroit will soon reopen under the same name, or so a sign hanging outside the restaurant suggests.

The restaurant chain – all 11 stores – went out of business following bad publicity involving its fugitive owner, Talal Chahine, who federal prosecutors linked to terrorism, along with other charges, including evading $6.9 million in federal income taxes.

We do not yet know who is reopening the restaurant — “The New La Shish” — (at the corner of Michigan and Oakman) but the name selection could be a double-edged sword.

While the La Shish name has baggage because of its fugitive creator, it also has brand awareness. Say the name to nearly anyone and it is instantly associated with good Middle Eastern cuisine.

Building a brand, no matter the business, takes time and money . . . and then a lot more of both before you can breakthrough the clutter in a city like Dearborn that is crowded with plenty of good Middle Eastern restaurants.

The La Shish name for a restaurant certainly has recognition. The question is what do potential customers associate the name with these days.

Time will tell . . .

Thousands of hungry people in metro Detroit will benefit this winter from local donations from customers and staff of Dearborn’s Westborn Market and its stores in Berkley and Livonia.

During the past month, this independent gourmet grocer’s three stores collected donations totaling nearly $14,400 for Forgotten Harvest, a mobile food rescue organization in metro Detroit.

For several years, Westborn Market has been an active supporter of Forgotten Harvest and collected holiday donations to help feed the hungry. Special recognition was given to Westborn’s Berkley cashier Patricia Labbate who helped raise nearly $2,000 of the total received.

“This generous donation will help us rescue and deliver more than 75,000 meals to people right here in our community,” said Susan Goodell, executive director of Forgotten Harvest.

Westborn Market helps Forgotten Harvest in other ways throughout the year, including the non-profit’s annual Champagne Cruise fund-raiser held each summer during the Woodward Dream Cruise.

“Even in a tough economy, we can always rely on our customers and staff to be extremely generous to help those less fortunate,” said Mark Anusbigian, president of Westborn Market and a member of Forgotten Harvest’s Advisory Board. “While there are signs of optimism about Michigan’s economic recovery, we know the need is still very great, especially during these winter months.”

Westborn Market has stores in Dearborn, Berkley and Livonia. Location information is available at www.westbornmarket.com or by calling 313-274-6100.

Ribbon Cutting at 1 p.m. Wednesday Celebrates Grand Opening

One year and eight months after breaking ground, the new Midwest Medical Center at the Dearborn Town Center at Michigan and Schaefer will celebrate its official grand opening Wednesday.

During these tough economic times across our state, the dedication of this multi-million dollar development is nice to see. While we can argue whether a medical facility was the best use of this corner (former home of Montgomery Ward), having this piece of property sit vacant in our city until that “something better” came along simply wasn’t an option in these tough economic times.

But that is exactly the position Dearborn Council President Tom Tafelski and Councilman George Darany took when this project was voted on a couple of years ago. Both voted against having REDICO Development Company build a medical center. It will be interesting to see if the two show up for the building’s dedication this Wednesday at 1 p.m.

For those of you planning to join, the dedication will take place at 1 p.m. inside the Midwest Medical Center, 4700 Schaefer. There will be refreshments served and speeches will begin at 1:15 p.m. with remarks from:

• Brian Connolly, Oakwood Healthcare

• Dr. Mark Saffer, Midwest Health Clinic

• Mayor Jack O’Reilly, Jr., The City of Dearborn

• Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano

• Dale Watchowski, REDICO Development Company

The actual ribbon cutting will take place at 1:45 p.m. and building tours will then take place at 1:50 p.m.

The facility officially opens Jan. 3, 2011 providing healthcare services to Dearborn and southeastern Michigan.

Switch is Official: Panera Cares in Dearborn Opens Today, Nov. 21

Eat what you want, pay what you can at Dearborn's Panera Cares, located at Michigan and Howard.

Dearborn’s Panera Bread officially switches to Panera Cares today, a non-profit restaurant where customers pay what they wish for their order.

We wrote about this switch earlier in the week (see that story HERE.). Dearborn becomes the second store that we know of to go to this new business model. The first opened in Clayton, Mo., earlier this year.

Readers of this site seem to be tracking neutral to negative with this change, questioning the wisdom, the people it may attract and what it will do to other businesses who can’t afford to give away their product for discount prices or even free.

Interesting that our Dearborn store is sandwiched between a Panera Bread in Dearborn Heights on Ford Road and another in Allen Park atop of landfill mountain. Kind of feels like the Panera corporate folks are hedging bets with this experiment in Dearborn.

Two employees of the Dearborn store say the same experience Panera Bread offered patrons will continue with the switch to Panera Cares.

Here is what an employee by the name of April Kersey and Rachel Sleger posted in our comments section (the typos and misspelled words are not ours):

April Kersey says:

Okay, I work at the panera cares in Dearborn Mi. We open tomarrow and we are on fire for the switch. This switch means nothing but great things for the community! The fereshly baked yesterday goods are only in the bakery section and taste exactly the same, dont belive us, let us give you a sample. We want you to taste our product before you donate for it. Our store is still held to the same standards. We only give product to our customers what is quality! The bread that your sandwhichs are on is freash baked daily and the food is all the same. We enocurage those with the means to pay at least suggested donation level, to do so and if you cant, well thats okay too. thats what we are here for. its not a hand out its a hand up. We open tomarrow – Sunday. Come see us. We’ll show you what were all about.

Rachel Sleger says:

I am also a worker at the Panera Cares in Dearborn, MI. This is something that is great and exciting! Everyone should be happy for this change because that’s exactly what we are doing…we are making a change. We are helping others who are in need and also still here for those regular customers that come in every morning to order their bagel with cream cheese and coffee before work. Panera is all about warmth. We want everyone to feel welcome. As April stated above, if you are at all concerned about the quality of our bakery items or cafe items everyone in the bakery cafe is more than willing to open their arms and answer any questions or hand out samples to ensure our product tastes no different. Our sandwiches are made on baked fresh daily bread along with the baguettes we serve as a side with any entree. The product is to the same standards as before. Our bakery section is baked fresh yesterday items. Our grand reopening is tomorrow Sunday, November 21! We encourage everyone to stop in to learn a bit more of what we are about and support our non-profit community cafe.

The two employees make a valid point. Before anyone writes off the switch, we should at least drop in once and try it.

Pay-what-you-wish is expected to soon begin at Dearborn's Panera.

Dearborn’s Panera will soon become one of the company’s nonprofit restaurants where customers pay-what-you wish.

Panera, which operates 1,400 franchised and corporate-owned bakery-cafes across the country, opened its first pay what you wish restaurant in Clayton, Mo., earlier this year.

Dearborn is now preparing to join this small non-profit experiment and will now be called Panera Cares.

We aren’t sure what to make of this move but some employees at the Dearborn Panera aren’t happy with the switch. Perhaps worth noting is that in the first experiment of pay-what-you-wish, nearly all baked goods were day-old from other stores. We are not sure how that will sit here in Dearborn.

In Clayton, cashiers tell customers their orders’ “suggested” price based on the menu. About 60% to 70% pay in full, Panera says. About 15% leave a little more and another 15% pay less, or nothing at all. A handful have left big donations, like $20 for a cup of coffee.

Panera’s Clayton store is run under the company’s St. Louis Bread Co. banner by a nonprofit organization called Panera Cares that publicly traded Panera Co. supports. But Panera won’t bear the nonprofit’s losses if the experiment fails. In an earlier story, Panera said the nonprofit is considering locations that, like Clayton, are upscale but accessible to lower-income customers. In Clayton’s case, St. Louis County’s offices and court house are nearby.

An earlier news article said “The Clayton Panera has hardly turned into a soup kitchen. Its longtime business clientele kept the lunch hour busy last week, with well-dressed workers clustered around laptops and talking on cellphones.”

To control freeloaders in the Clayton store, signs remind customers that “You’re on your honor.”

If it moves forward in Dearborn, it should be an interesting experiment.

The Dearborn Atrium, formerly Adams Jr. High School, apparently has been sold for somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.6 million.

Sold in 2005 for $19 million, the Dearborn Atrium is said to have sold for about $1.6 million.

Several city officials have now confirmed to DeepsaidWhat.com that the three structures – the school, a parking deck and a third building (also formerly a school) – were fetched for the bargain basement price of $1.6 million. This is the same building that in 2005 traded for $19 million.

The big question on the table is who purchased the building and what will move into the building.

There has been much speculation that the building would be used for a charter school, but the property currently is not zoned for such a use. That at least means the city would have control on whether to approve such a use or not. As it stands now, city planners would not be in favor of such a use.

Dearborn Mayor John B. O’Reilly, Jr., says the city understands the buildings will be used as the primary operations for a business that wants to move into Dearborn. O’Reilly couldn’t provide any more detail beyond that as the city apparently does not know much about the purchaser yet.

A new business moving into that building would be great news for business owners that surround that area. Business owners near the school took a big financial hit when automotive supplier Plastech closed shop and filed for bankruptcy.

There are lots of possibilities for this building that was built in 1916. The former school was completely renovated to the shell in 1994.

The property consists of two three-story office buildings and a covered parking structure consisting of 90,774 square feet and 307 parking spaces. The two office buildings consist of 133,001 net rentable square feet and 154,104 square feet of gross building area and sit on 4.09 acres.

Dearborn city officials say they have a serious bid on the table for the city’s Florida apartment building for retirees but it will be at least three months before any deal can be officially inked.

The unnamed potential purchaser has bid $6.7 million for the 50-year old Florida property. The bidder was one of four people who expressed interest in the building (although the city says just three of the bids were serious offers). In 2007, the Dearborn Towers apartment complex in Clearwater, Fla. was valued at between $8 million and $8.3 million, according to one informal appraisal. Another appraisal in March 2008 put the value of property at about $5.6 million.

So the current letter of intent the city has to purchase the building for $6.7 million is a good one but odds are good the company making the bid will come back with something lower. The potential purchaser has 45 days to conduct its due diligence on the building.

“Their will be negotiations at the end of this period,” Dearborn Mayor John B. O’Reilly, Jr., said at Monday’s city council meeting. “The best case scenario (for a sale) would be at least three months. I think it will be longer than that.”

When the due diligence is completed you can be sure the offer will be lowered to at least $6 million as part of the negotiations. Dearborn City Council will then have to decide whether the bid, whatever the amount, is a good one before entering into a purchase agreement.

For an earlier story on the Dearborn Towers, click HERE.

We kind of figured there was something suspicious about the timing of Burton-Katzman’s bankruptcy filing last week.

Well, it turns out  it was a looming court-ordered deadline of Sept. 1 to pay the City of Dearborn $5 million in penalties related to the unbuilt development project in west Dearborn that triggered the bankruptcy filing, according to the City of Dearborn.

Instead of paying the fine, the Burton-Katzman company (West Village Commons, LLC, and Westminister Homes LLC) on Aug. 26 filed bankruptcy under Chapter 7.

“The City believes the Aug. 26 bankruptcy filing was a strategic move to avoid paying the $5 million due on Sept. 1,” the city said in a statement issued Monday.

City officials in a statement say they still plan to hold the individuals and other entities behind Burton-Katzman Development Company, Inc. responsible for the court-ordered payment and other court-ordered provisions.

For a bit more on the history behind this battle, click the link below.

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In a move that shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to those who have been following the very public fight between the city of Dearborn and developer Burton-Katzman, three of the Bingham Farms corporate entities have filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

The bankruptcy includes West Village Commons LLC, the entity developing a mixed-use project in Dearborn. The LLC lists $3.5 million in assets, mostly land, and $11.2 million in secured and unsecured debts, according to Crain’s.

West Village Commons LLC is one of three of the Bingham Farms corporate entities controlled by Peter Burton, Bob Katzman and other investors who filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy on Thursday.

We have written here many times about the court fight between Burton-Katzman and the city of Dearborn, in which the city won a court order to force the developers to complete two buildings agreed to under a contract with the city. Even the 75,000-square-foot building, currently on the site, isn’t fully developed.

The bankruptcy move by Burton-Katzman was no doubt a way to avoid having to abide by that court order to finish the Dearborn development.

Also filing is Westminster Homes LLC, a home development arm used by the group of investors, which lists $225,000 in assets and $1.4 million in debt, according to Crain’s.

Burton-Katzman Development Co. also filed bankruptcy, but it apparently has no assets.

The Dearborn Chamber of Commerce has set up a networking group as a way to help its members generate new business. In a press release issued last week, the Chamber says its networking group -– Chamber Connect -– is designed to generate business opportunities through referrals.

Membership in this group, which only began this year, is limited to one representative per business category to enable Chamber members “to acquire valid leads to help grow their companies.” Chamber Connect has 19 members and passes between 10-17 referrals each meeting – totaling 20-34 referrals a month, according to the Chamber of Commerce.

“The Dearborn Chamber Connect is a great group of people who are just as passionate about helping each other as they are with their own businesses,” says Ryan O’Hara of Sphinx Technology Solutions in the Chamber’s press release. “Since joining the group, I have seen a significant spike in sales thanks to the commitment of this group to the success of its members. Every single member has a valid contribution to make.”

For more information or to request an application, you can contact the Chamber at 313-584-6100.