A neighborhood market is returning to the corner of Packard and Dewey!
Ann Arbor Builders is renovating the building for husband and wife team Bill Brinkerhoff and Kathy Sample who will open a market similar to their Argus Farm Stop at 325 W. Liberty in the building we renovated for them in 2014.
The new market will sell produce, fruit, meats, and dairy products that are grown in Michigan – an every day, year-round farmers market. A full coffee bar will be a feature that draws in the Burns Park and surrounding communities. This market has a mission of growing our local food ecosystem, encouraging local farmers to grow more, and creating community awareness about Michigan’s agricultural diversity.
When the market opens, the building will have come full circle: it began as Clague’s Grocery and Meat Market in 1926. Its grand opening is pictured below.
For the next 43 years, Ashley Clague, for whom Clague Middle School is named, owned and operated the store. He's pictured below in 1968.
But Clague was more than a grocer. He was also an active civic leader. He served on the Ann Arbor School Board from 1941 to 1956, including 3 years as its president.
He also served on the Ann Arbor Parks Commission for 19 years, was president of the Washtenaw Retail Grocers and Meat Dealers Association, president of Washtenaw County Muscular Dystrophy Association, and a board member of the Ann Arbor Chamber of Commerce. He was active in Kiwanis and helped to develop Veteran’s Memorial Park.
When Clague retired in 1969, the Ann Arbor News praised him as a “community institution,” and wrote that “there’s a mood of sadness at the 43-year-old grocery store." Generations who had shopped at Clague’s “come in to shake his hand and stammer out thanks for a job well done.”
The building is shown in 1968. Other businesses subsequently occupied the space but none lasted as long as Clague’s.
The most recent occupant, Ann Arbor Cyclery, closed in 2010, and the building sat vacant and deteriorating ever since.
We’re very excited to breathe new life into the building that has so much local history, and we wish Bill and Kathy great success!
- Betsy de Parry, VP Marketing and Sales