In September 2025, word spread fast along Mack Avenue: the developer behind a contested rezoning at 20160 Mack had pulled his application. Residents who had spent months circulating petitions and standing on lawns with handmade signs welcomed the withdrawal. CBS Detroit ran the story under a headline about residents claiming victory. The fight, as far as most people who lived nearby were concerned, was over.
It wasn't. On January 5, 2026, four months after the "win," Grosse Pointe Woods City Council voted 7 to 0 to approve a new plan for the exact same address. The building is coming back. It just isn't coming back as the thing anyone fought against.
That reversal is the real story of Mack Avenue this year, and it says more about how this corridor actually works than any single restaurant opening does. The loudest fight of 2025 didn't stop change. It reshaped it. Meanwhile, on the same half-mile of pavement, three other businesses changed hands or opened their doors without a single petition, because the zoning already allowed it.
How the Mack Avenue Proposal Changed
The original proposal at 20160 Mack asked the city to rezone a vacant, single-story medical office building from restricted office to commercial. Buccellato Development, which already owned eight properties along the Woods' stretch of Mack, wanted room for a restaurant and other commercial tenants. The city's Planning Commission had already recommended approval, and voted unanimously on July 22, 2025, to reaffirm that recommendation even as opposition grew.
The opposition was not small. By early August, roughly 570 residents had signed petitions against the rezoning, a number that grew past 700 by the time the developer withdrew. The objections were specific: more traffic on residential side streets, overflow parking, late-night noise, rats, and a fear that the property would become, in the words used at public meetings, a strip center. One Oxford Road resident told the council the project risked permanently changing the character of the street. Others pointed out that the Woods had recently lost several restaurants and didn't need space carved out for another one.
City Council took up the matter on August 18, 2025. Before it could reach a final vote, Buccellato withdrew the application in September, and the story that traveled fastest focused on residents claiming victory.
What actually happened next got far less attention. A revised plan for the same parcel came back through the Planning Commission, this time from Stucky Vitale Architects, and it looked nothing like a strip center. The new proposal called for roughly 8,800 square feet of ground-floor space for office, retail, food, or personal service use, with up to seven residential units on a second floor above it. Mixed use, not straight commercial. Housing on top of retail, not a drive-thru pad site.
That version cleared the same council that had been under pressure to reject the first one. The vote was unanimous.
The mixed-use version is not a footnote to the fight. It is the answer to it. Residents said they weren't against progress, they wanted thoughtful change, and the plan that eventually got a 7-0 vote is the version that added apartments instead of asphalt. The building at 20160 Mack is still coming. It just isn't the building anyone circulated a petition against.
While Everyone Watched One Corner, Mack Already Changed Around It
The properties that didn't need anyone's permission moved a lot faster.
Chick-fil-A opened at Mack and Marseilles on November 13, 2025, and cars were already pulling into the drive-thru lanes before the official 6:30 a.m. start time. No zoning fight preceded it. The parcel was already commercial.
Two months later, Lola's Taco Bar took over a much larger and more visible space: the former Boston Market at 20195 Mack, just south of Norwood. The pedigree behind it is unusual for a fast-casual taco counter. Co-owner Branden McRill is a Grosse Pointe native who spent more than two decades in New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia kitchens, including his own project, Rebelle, a wine-focused restaurant that earned a Michelin star before closing in 2017. He's also been connected to New York institutions including Pearl & Ash, The Modern, Jean-Georges, and Alinea. Running the kitchen is Brandon Zarb, formerly of Ferndale's Imperial. The restaurant runs a rotating charitable tie-in called the Good Taco initiative, currently benefiting Rising Stars Academy, a metro Detroit nonprofit that trains intellectually and developmentally disabled adults in job skills.
A few doors down, in the space that used to hold Lyla's Catering at 20083 Mack, Pangea Global Kitchen has since opened between two Mack Avenue fixtures, Ashby's Sterling Ice Cream and Viviano Flower Shop. It comes from a Grosse Pointe Woods couple, Murad and Alison Rybicki Abusoboh, who grew their existing catering company, Abu Lawrence Catering, into a storefront built around Murad's native Jordanian cooking alongside dishes from other countries, run mostly as a takeout counter with limited dine-in seating.
Further down toward Brys Drive, at 21115 Mack, a business called Tapper's Gold Rush cleared its city approvals last year. It isn't retail jewelry. It evaluates and buys coins, bullion, and precious metals by appointment, and it marks the eighth metro Detroit location for the Tapper's brand. The owners, Miserendino and Rinke, both grew up in the Woods and told the city the building was run down and leaking water into the roof before they invested in it. Because the property was already zoned commercial, the city council approved the site plan without requiring a use variance.
Four businesses, four different paths onto Mack Avenue, and only one of them required the kind of public fight that made regional news.
What Was Already There, Still Holding the Corridor Together
Not everything on Mack changed this year, and some of what stayed put explains why the corridor absorbed all of this without losing its shape.
The city has installed six solar-powered rectangular rapid flashing beacon crosswalks along Mack Avenue, at Hampton and Ridgemont, at Anita, and at Brys. These are the crossings pedestrians now use to get between the new restaurants, the ice cream shop, the flower shop, and the businesses further down toward Vernier. A corridor absorbing more walk-in food traffic got safer crossings around the same stretch of years, whether or not that was the explicit intent.
Mack Avenue Dance Center, at 20945 Mack, has been training dancers for more than 40 years and remains one of the corridor's longest-running businesses. Its students performed at this year's Kercheval After 6 street fair in neighboring Grosse Pointe Park, a reminder that the Woods' institutions show up in the wider Pointes even when their home address doesn't change.
What This Means If You Walk Mack Ave
The lesson from this year isn't that Grosse Pointe Woods is becoming something else. It's that the corridor has two very different speeds. Anything already zoned commercial can turn over in months, a former Boston Market becomes a taco bar with a Michelin-trained chef almost before anyone notices the sign change. Anything that requires rezoning from residential-adjacent office use moves at the speed of public hearings, petitions, and revised architectural plans, and a proposal can return in a revised form that the council approves unanimously.
If you're trying to guess what Mack Avenue looks like a year from now, the properties to watch aren't the ones already selling tacos. They're the ones still zoned restricted office, the ones that look quiet right up until a developer files paperwork. The 20160 Mack story didn't end when the withdrawal made headlines. It ended four months later, at a council meeting most people weren't watching, with a very different building on the drawing board than the one that started the fight.
If you've been noticing these changes from your own porch on Mack, or you're curious what a corridor like this means for a specific address nearby, Megan Ford is a call away. Let's Connect.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
