![]() ![]() I came to Plymouth Road Mall nearly every day for some reason or other, and I noticed that the parking lot was always empty.” Edelstein, who has no ownership in Plymouth Road Mall, says the plaza would have been built in 2007, but he and his partners put it on hold when Pfizer exited and the economy sagged. He lives and owns rental property in the neighborhood and conceived the idea for the plaza “eight to ten years ago, when the library and Bello Vino were here. Trim, silver-haired, drinking herbal tea and scrolling through his iPhone, Edelstein suggested meeting in the new Starbucks. All four of the ground-floor businesses can be entered either from the parking lot or from the sidewalk side.” It sits close to the sidewalk, which Edelstein says reflects “the philosophy of making the city more walkable. It’s a two-story structure, which gives more infill bang for the buck (the second floor, as yet unrented, is office space). The Plaza’s other two owners are builder Louis Johnson and Plymouth Mall owner Vern Hutton, who supplied the site.Įdelstein points out a few other features, suggested by city planners, that helped the design move swiftly through the approval process. Infill projects, which take advantage of existing infrastructure like roads and sewers, are the style du jour in urban planning, and Edelstein should know–he has a PhD in urban planning from the U-M. “It seemed like a no-brainer to do a project that was infill, as opposed to greenfield,” explains Jack Edelstein, one of three owners of Plymouth Road Plaza. Vlazny says its niche is “healthy food,” a less stringent category than “health food.” If you want, you can load your lettuce with salami, cheese, and even crushed Doritos, as well as antibiotic- and hormone-free chicken. Other than the convection oven used to bake bread, The Big Salad does no cooking all the food (except the soup) is cold. Or they can choose from preselected combinations, like–grabbing one at random–the Alaskan King: “crab, broccoli, peas, and chow mein noodles … gently chopped in a bed of spinach and topped with our wasabi dressing.” The menu also offers soups and sandwiches (Vlazny’s personal favorite is cranberry turkey, because “it tastes like Thanksgiving”). Customers choose their lettuce base and call out additions, which plastic-gloved workers pull from stainless-steel wells. So is the customer-directed assembly line popularized by Subway. If the Bornotys’ ambitious plans come to fruition, though, there will be a Store 200–in the year 2020. In fact, he’s store number five, and only the third franchisee in the chain John and Beth Bornoty started in Grosse Pointe Woods in 2008. Only twenty-six years old, from Dexter, the EMU hotel and restaurant management grad says he wanted a franchise rather than his own restaurant because “I’m young, and I wanted to learn from someone else.” He was attracted to the Big Salad because “healthy food is a natural match for Ann Arbor,” and “because I didn’t want to be store number 200” in a more established chain. ![]() Franchisee Kevin Vlazny is new to the game too. if you order a dark coffee, it’s likely to be made fresh, through a single-serving cone filter, rather than pumped from an air pot, because “we just don’t get that much call for dark roast in the afternoon,” says the considerate counterperson. The Starbucks has a drive-thru, and after about 2 p.m. Two of the four shops–Great Clips and LaVida Massage–service the outside of the body, and two–The Big Salad and Starbucks–feed the inside. Embedded in its architecture are some small clues about contemporary fashions in urban planning,įor the less theoretical-minded, here’s how you can spend your money there. Plymouth Road Plaza, a small, two-story mini-mall, recently opened in what used to be the front parking lot of the Plymouth Road Mall. ![]()
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