From September 25 through 27, Nine Mile Road became the kind of scene Ferndale built its reputation on. The DIY Street Fair filled the stretch between Woodward and Troy Street with more than 150 independent artists and makers, three days of local bands, and food vendors working out of tents instead of storefronts. It was free, it ran late on Friday and Saturday, and it was built entirely around the do-it-yourself ethic that gave the event its name.
A few blocks away, the corridor's most-watched vacancy just got filled by the opposite of a DIY debut. Bad Brad's BBQ, a barbecue chain that already runs five locations across the suburbs, is taking over 345 East Nine Mile Road, the space everyone in town still refers to by its old name: Otus Supply. That contrast, a proven multi-location operator moving into Ferndale's most mourned closure just after the city's flagship independent festival took over the sidewalk out front, says something about where this stretch of Nine Mile actually stands right now. The small storefronts are still going to first-timers. The big room is going to someone who already knows how to run five of them.
What's Moving Into 345 East Nine Mile
Otus Supply spent six years as Ferndale's answer to a listening room, an 11,000-square-foot restaurant and music venue that opened in December 2016 and built a following around dinner-and-a-show nights in its Parliament Room. It closed abruptly in February 2023, a decision the Downtown Development Authority had no hand in and offered no public reason for beyond a short statement thanking the community. The address has sat waiting for its next chapter for three years.
What's replacing it is not another local concept trying to fill an oversized room. According to WCSX, Bad Brad's BBQ has submitted a redevelopment liquor license for the address, at the corner of Leland Street near Go Comedy! Improv Theater, and owner Mike Pollard has said he hopes to open by the end of this year or early 2027. This will be the chain's sixth location. It started in New Baltimore in 2009 and has since expanded to Shelby Township, Clinton Township, Orion Township, and Livonia. Mashed magazine named its brisket the best in Michigan this past April. The Ferndale location will sit a few storefronts down from Balam Coffee & Wine, which means the same short block will soon carry both a regional chain founded in 2009 making its Ferndale debut and a small independent wine bar that opened earlier this year.
That is a different kind of tenant than the one Ferndale's downtown has typically attracted, and a different outcome than three years of vacancy might have suggested. The city's development story for the last decade has largely been first-time restaurateurs and single-location concepts testing themselves on Nine Mile or Woodward. A five-location chain choosing this address to become a six-location chain reads as a market signal: the corridor has enough foot traffic and brand recognition that operators with a track record elsewhere are treating it as their next logical stop, not their first bet, even after the space sat empty for three years.
The Smaller Storefronts Are Telling a Different Story
While the anchor space works through its transition, the smaller addresses along the same corridor are filling in the way Ferndale's downtown always has, one independent concept at a time.
- The Corner Shop, 23337 Woodward, opened this spring from the team behind Rail & Anchor gift store in downtown Royal Oak. It is a coffee shop, wine bar, and bookstore under one roof. Coffee, tea, and espresso run on the cafe side; a full bar with cocktails, wine, and beer runs on the other. After 3 p.m. the kitchen opens for small snacks, and the bookstore side stays open until 10 p.m. daily.
- Rovi Grill, 22821 Woodward, is a counter-service Middle Eastern and Mediterranean spot with online ordering, delivery, and a dining room, open daily starting at 11 a.m.
- Balam Coffee & Wine, 207 East Nine Mile Road, opened its cafe and wine bar earlier this year, giving that end of the block another low-key daytime-into-evening option before Bad Brad's arrives a few doors down.
None of these are chains. None are backed by an operator with five other locations already generating revenue elsewhere. They are the kind of single-address bets that have defined Ferndale's food scene for years, and they are still the majority of what's opening. The difference this fall is that the block's biggest, most visible vacancy skipped that pattern entirely.
Why the DIY Weekend Makes the Contrast Sharper
The DIY Street Fair has run in some form for years, and its footprint this year covered Nine Mile between Woodward and Troy Street, spilling onto Woodward and East Troy as well. Friday hours ran 6 p.m. to midnight, Saturday from 11 a.m. to midnight, and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Admission was free. The lineup leaned on local bands, a marketplace of independent makers, and a restaurant row staffed by area chefs working temporary setups rather than permanent leases.
It is, by design, a celebration of exactly the kind of business model that isn't moving into 345 East Nine Mile this year. The festival's entire identity rests on independence and first attempts. The address it passed right by on its way down Nine Mile is going to a chain in its sixth expansion. Both things were on display in Ferndale this fall, and neither canceled the other out. The festival drew the crowd. The chain still gets the big room. What's changed is that the big room no longer automatically goes to whoever is trying something new for the first time.
What Comes Right After
The calendar didn't slow down after the fair packed up. The city's Fall Festival returns to Martin Road Park on Saturday, October 3, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., held this year at the Detroit Curling Club with hayrides, pumpkin painting, and a trick-or-treat trail. Early-bird tickets run $8 through October 1, rising to $10 after that, with children age one and under admitted free. It's a smaller, more residential kind of event than the DIY weekend, drawing families to a park rather than artists to a sidewalk, and it marks the point in the season where Ferndale's calendar shifts from festival energy back to a quieter neighborhood rhythm.
That rhythm is where the Bad Brad's opening will actually land. By the time the barbecue chain flips the lights on at 345 East Nine Mile, likely sometime between late 2026 and early 2027, the DIY crowds will be long gone and the fall festival will be a memory. What will still be standing is the corridor itself: a stretch of Nine Mile where the small addresses keep going to first-time operators and the largest one just went to a company that already knew exactly what it was doing before it ever signed the lease.
Watching what opens next along Nine Mile and Woodward? Let's Connect with Megan Ford to swap notes on the new coffee counters, wine bars, and the barbecue room still to come.
