Show caption Hide caption Barry Hicks, the Downtown Development Authority director for Ferndale, Mich. stands near a bus stop in downtown Ferndale that features a sign of actor Will... Barry Hicks, the Downtown Development Authority director for Ferndale, Mich. stands near a bus stop in downtown Ferndale that features a sign of actor Will Ferrell telling Ferndale, "You Stay Funky!" Photographed on Thursday, March 14, 2019. Kimberly P. Mitchell, Detroit Free Press

"You stay funky Ferndale."

Those words are on a poster at a bus stop on Nine Mile, just west of Woodward, above a photo of actor Will Ferrell as Ron Burgundy in "Anchorman," hand on hip, wearing a leather jacket with massive lapels of fur.

"One of our volunteers put that in there, and it's kind of funny," Ferndale Downtown Development Authority Executive Director Barry Hicks said. "But that's the type of thing that I think you're just going to keep seeing here. That's like the embodiment of the attitude down here."

For a local guerrilla artist who believes a series of downtown development projects threaten the small city's charming "groove," the poster embodies an opportunity. And he has targeted it to make his own statement.

"As soon as I saw that, I was like, 'Eh, that's the next one,' " said the artist, who asked to not be identified because, while he says his art is easy-to-remove, such mischief is often criminal. "By pushing all these projects, I don't think they realize that it's going to strip that funkiness completely away. I think they're kind of shooting themselves in the foot."

Then and now: Downtown Ferndale See the changes underway in downtown Ferndale, from the 1950s to 2010s. Robert Allen, Detroit Free Press

Last year, his "Don’t Royal Oak my Ferndale" sign was a fixture for months on the then-unoccupied northeast corner of Woodward and Nine Mile. He later hung a "Don’t Royal Oak Our Ferndale" sign on a vacant dry cleaners building on Nine Mile, and, last December, put fake giraffes on land anticipated for development south of Ferndale High School, along with a sign that warned: “Giraffes are the first to flee danger. A developer wants to clear-cut the woods, dig up the soil/contamination will spread over our homes and FHS students. Save our last green space!”

Ferndale, an eclectic town of about 20,000 residents, is one of the trendiest spots in metro Detroit, with vibrant nightlife, highly rated restaurants and a unique mix of breweries, meaderies and a distillery.

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It has long been an affordable alternative to neighboring Royal Oak to the north for home buyers and renters seeking a thriving culture and walkable downtown. But median home sales have risen substantially over the past five years, up 77 percent from January 2014 ($98,000) compared to February 2019 ($173,850), according to Farmington Hills-based Realcomp multiple listing service. The region's home prices are rising in general, but that difference is greater than the numbers in both Royal Oak, 43 percent, and Oakland County overall, 42 percent.

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Now, developments are transforming the downtown area surrounding the intersection of Woodward and Nine Mile.

Construction started in January on Allen and Troy, where a 138-space parking lot is being converted into Development on Troy (DOT), an up-to five-story, 400-space parking structure with retail, commercial space and possibly apartments.

Another five-story project underway at Nine Mile and Planavon is expected to open this spring as FerndaleHaus, an apartment complex described as "luxury loft living" with ground-level retail.

Demolition work is expected to begin this spring at 409 East Nine Mile, clearing structures to make way for a four-story, mixed-use building with 127 apartment units and ground-level commercial space.

Baker College seeks to break ground this summer on a downtown Ferndale campus, including another parking garage, with completion in time for the fall 2020 semester.

All four are within half a mile of each other. And in a city that seems busiest on nights and weekends, they're anticipated to attract more daytime traffic.

"I can see so many changes. ... It's just amazing," said Jan Froggatt, president of the Ferndale Historical Society, who said those changes are "attracting another economic factor" to what has long been a blue-collar town.

"It's going to bring another dynamic into Ferndale."

Construction zones

Clang-pshh-clang-pshh-clang.

Martha Sempliner, owner of the Library Bookstore on Nine Mile in the heart of downtown, doesn't just hear the construction noise behind her business.

"I can feel it sitting in my chair — I can feel my chair thump," she said, adding that she's concerned about how the vibrations could affect her store and other properties on Nine Mile Road. "Everybody around here should be concerned. I'm not happy about it at all."

Behind the bookstore, the $28 million Development on Troy recently began its estimated 12- to 15-month construction at what had been the city's busiest parking lot. Sempliner opposes the project. She said the added parking spaces are needed, but not the business space or possible apartments.

"Everything else is greed and some kind of, 'Look what I can do,' " Sempliner said. "I've been here for 35 years. You see big projects planned for all over now, and who are they really helping?"

Shelby Simpson of Ferndale walks her dog Nala on Nine Mile Road in Ferndale, Thursday, March 7, 2019. Junfu Han, Detroit Free Press

She said 15 months of construction could hurt the businesses, and it would've taken much less time to simply build a parking structure without the extras. Sempliner owns her building and others nearby, with a bike shop and coffee shop among the tenants. Usually, she raises rent once per year, but not this year — because the construction creates "a hardship."

"Personally, I think it's a good way to be to have independent businesses and not 70-foot (tall) buildings," Sempliner said. "And who really gains, and how do you tell that, and how long does it take to tell that?"

On the other side of Woodward, Dean Bach owns two businesses, one on either side of where Baker College officials hope to break ground this summer. He had been trying to sell the bars and restaurants — M-Brew, on Vester and Bermuda, and Dino's Lounge, on Woodward south of Nine Mile — but said the college's plans are one of the reasons he's decided to stay.

"If you stay stagnant and the city doesn't allow these things to happen, I'd be concerned about Ferndale turning into Ferndale (of the) '70s, '80s, '90s," he said, adding that it would go, "kind of stale."

"If you stay flat, you flatline," he said.

Bach said that when he opened Dino's in 2002, there were about six restaurants in a two-block radius, "and now, there's more like 26."

He said the parking deck's construction will hurt businesses in the short term.

"But if you wait it out, there's a big pot of gold at the end of the rainbow."

From Old Navy to Rust Belt Market

The small, densely populated community straddling Woodward Avenue on Detroit's northern border is celebrated for its quirky businesses and residents.

"It's like a mini Austin," said Gaal Karp, developer with Ferndale Haus, a mixed-use apartment building opening soon with about 106 apartments starting at $1,350 per month for a studio (the city's median gross rent was $975 in 2013-2017, according to U.S. Census data). "You know Austin's motto, 'Keep Austin Weird.' "

Mayor David Coulter said it's a community "authentic to ourselves" and doesn't have many chain businesses.

"I've lived in Ferndale long enough to see it evolve a couple different times, from sort of a dead, inner-ring suburb to a funky, grassroots kind of phase, to where we are now, which is a pretty popular and attractive entertainment and commercial (scene)," he said.

The Rust Belt Market, on the northwest corner of Woodward and Nine Mile, encapsulates much of Ferndale's identity: It's a marketplace of more than 40 independent, small businesses, from sellers of handmade metal signs, toys and vintage art to more offbeat businesses such as Painted Lady Trashions, which offers such oddities as a taxidermied baboon and sheep hearts in jars. Opened in 2011, today the market also includes a full bar, an event space and even a local radio station.

Previously, the building was occupied by a big-box clothing chain — The Gap and later, an Old Navy outlet store.

"It's still retail, I guess, but it's about the opposite of everything that Old Navy and The Gap represent to retail," Rust Belt Market co-owner Chris Best said, adding that visitors can get a drink at the bar and stroll through the shops. "Basically, it's like an anti-mall — a mall experience without the mall."

It's also expected to have a little construction of its own this year — cutting a hole in the side of the building that faces Nine Mile, to add a glassed-in area with another door, a workshop space and an area with cacti and other succulents for sale.

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Best said Rust Belt Market works "to give people a shot that have ambition and want to double down on their business, but they don't have the money."

He said the business has grown every year, and its lease on the space goes to 2032. And although the Rust Belt appears to be in good shape for the next several years, he said, he has noticed nearby lease rates rising and said local business owners are concerned about them "going up so much that you have that Royal Oak effect."

"You sterilize the downtown a bit. Meaning, you get sterile brands that only people with a lot of money can play," Best said. "Every downtown that grows runs into that."

Rates for new leases on commercial space in Ferndale are about $20 to $25 per square foot per year, plus the three nets: property tax, building insurance and common area maintenance, which for downtown spaces is usually $3 to $5 per square foot, Rick Ax, an associate broker with Farbman Commercial Real Estate Services said in an email. Longtime tenants there are paying about $14 to $16 per square foot, plus the three nets.

By comparison, he said that in Royal Oak, commercial leasing rates on Main Street are in the mid-20s to low-30s in dollars per square foot, plus the three nets.

Royal Oak's downtown is much larger than Ferndale's, and it does have several chain restaurants mixed in with local businesses that include restaurants, breweries and coffee shops, similar to Ferndale. But Royal Oak in recent years has become more upscale — as longtime businesses such as Superior Fish Co., the Footprints shoe store and Oxford Inn restaurant have departed.

More: How nightlife has changed in Oakland County’s hottest downtowns

More: Farmers fear development near Royal Oak market will kill business

Royal Oak in the past year has had its own set of developments that caused inconveniences for businesses — including, apparently, Andiamo, whose owner cited parking issues as well as rent increases as reasons the local chain closed its downtown Royal Oak location after 19 years.

Sandy Levine owns the Oakland Art Novelty Co., a craft cocktail bar that opened in 2011, on Nine Mile, west of Woodward in downtown Ferndale. Construction of the Development on Troy is underway near the bar's back door, meaning that 138 parking spaces have disappeared until the estimated 15-month-long project results in 400 spaces.

"We knew that this was just going to be something that we would just have to suffer through for a while," Levine said. "Once there's parking in Ferndale, that's going to be very much worth it."

The facade was recently redone, changing the speakeasy vibe to make it more obvious from the street that it is indeed a bar. Levine said the update was planned for years, and the addition of a patio on Nine Mile is anticipated to "expose us a little bit more." The Oakland is about halfway through a 15-year lease, and Levine has noticed the rising rents downtown.

"I am very concerned about when our lease expires, but that's kind of a long time from now," he said. "It's something that's been in my mind, but that's not something I've started to plan for."

He said he understands where the "Don't Royal Oak my Ferndale" sign artist is coming from. And the rising prices will price people out.

"Ferndale has had a really unique personality that I have loved," Levine said. "I live in Ferndale, and obviously I have a business in Ferndale as well. And I would hate for that personality to go away."

The 'G' word

"Gentrification: the process of repairing and rebuilding homes and businesses in a deteriorating area (such as an urban neighborhood) accompanied by an influx of middle-class or affluent people and that often results in the displacement of earlier, usually poorer residents." — from Merriam-Webster

In London in the 1960s, as the city changed from manufacturing into a "services-based economy and capital of finance," Ruth Glass, a sociologist and Marxist, coined the word, according to a Bloomberg article. "Gentrification" described middle-class people moving into Islington and Notting Hill, neighborhoods of London where people from the Caribbean lived and were being displaced.

"Her term is now commonly used to disparage bohemian-yet-bourgeois Parisians crawling the Marais, to mock the bearded microbrewer in Brooklyn, and to bemoan the rise of Berlin cool after the wall came down. All this has happened against the backdrop of a gigantic urban migration. By 2050, two-thirds of the world’s population will live in cities," Bloomberg reports.

In east Ferndale, a newly-built house on 3271 Inman, built from shipping containers, is offered for $450,000. Many of the surrounding ranch and bungalow houses on that block have an estimated value at less than $200,000, according to realtor.com. The location is just a few blocks east of Iron Ridge Marketplace, a $35 million redevelopment project that's turning a 13-acre former factory site into a restaurant and retail destination including a trendy fitness center, brewery and more.

Scott Campbell, University of Michigan associate professor of Urban Planning and director of Doctoral Studies with the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, said that concerns of people being displaced and a loss of authenticity are typical.

Art galleries, Starbucks and "restaurants selling kale salads" are "easy soft targets" as emblematic of gentrification, he said. But while they might be useful indicators, he added that that some say they're mislaid targets.

Dave Brown chats with his wife Cecilia Brown, both of Ferndale, as they walk their dogs Bandit and Casey on Nine Mile Road in Ferndale, Thursday, March 7, 2019. Junfu Han, Detroit Free Press

"They're there because there's already demand for those kinds of services, because large-scale developers have already come and put up condos," he said.

He described a "cascading quality" in real estate markets.

"People say, 'I want to live in Bloomfield, but what can I get?' And they say, 'Go to Troy, it's the next Bloomfield,' " Campbell said.

Perhaps if someone tells a real estate agent they want to live in Royal Oak but can't afford it, they're told to try Ferndale.

"People can't afford the neighborhood they want to live in, so they move into a place that's more affordable," Campbell said. "They're just trying to find an affordable place to live — then get hammered by existing residents."

Ferndale is appealing as preferences trend toward walkable, more-urban areas, Campbell said.

"The current generation of teens into their 20s and 30s is no longer interested in moving to large-lot McMansions and driving everywhere," Campbell said. The same is true of many empty-nesters.

Campbell pointed out that former Gov. Rick Snyder a few years ago bought a loft on Main Street in Ann Arbor. Previously, he'd lived in a gated community of large houses in Superior Township.

'The secret sauce'

Ferndale was incorporated in 1917 as a streetcar suburb of Detroit. By about the mid-20th Century, it was among American cities with the highest number of kids per household, said Froggatt and Coulter.

Its bustling downtown began losing businesses after Northland Mall opened in the mid-1950s in nearby Southfield. The population peaked at more than 31,000 in the 1960s before declining for decades.

In 1981, the Studio North Theatre on Woodward, and a former manager, were convicted of selling obscene films and a catalog in their lobby, after a previous conviction for the theater showing X-rated films "Easy" and "The Other Side of Julie." Today, that building is home to The Magic Bag, describing itself as "Detroit's premier nightlife, concert and comedy venue."

Bach has said that when he opened Dino's in 2002, downtown Ferndale was easy to miss when driving on Woodward.

From left, Debbie McGraw, Ed Jankowski, both of Downriver share a laughter with Lori and Dave Stoddart, both of Trenton, as they enjoy a drink at M-Brew in Ferndale, Thursday, March 7, 2019. Junfu Han, Detroit Free Press

“I wouldn’t have walked the alleys of Ferndale at night, to be honest,” he said. “It was dark. It was a little scary."

Today, data indicate Ferndale is no longer a leader for homes with kids in them. U.S. Census data show the city having 2.03 people per household, a number substantially below Oakland County, at 2.46, and slightly below Royal Oak, at 2.06.

But Coulter said he's seeing changes — the population numbers steadied and began to uptick in recent years, and "more families and young people moving to town ... I'm optimistic for the future."

Tiffany and Chris Best inside The Rust Belt Market on Friday, March 15. The Bests have owned the thriving market for eight years and it is filled with more than 20 local artists and businesses. Eric Seals, Detroit Free Press

The city is especially known for its welcoming culture.

"Developments in downtown get a lot of attention, but the secret sauce to me has always been the people that live there," Coulter said. "It is an open-minded, diverse, progressive community in the true sense of that word."

Ferndale became one of the first municipalities in the country to permanently install an LGBT pride flag in its City Council chambers, according to the city's website. The downtown is also home to Affirmations, a nonprofit offering services to LGBT people in southeast Michigan.

Campbell said communities like Ferndale are seen to have hit a "sweet spot," where there are still old diners and barber shops with a mix of demographics. Then things start to become unaffordable.

"Like forest eco-diversity, and then at some point one tree species is going to crowd it all out," he said. "And you want to say, 'Can you hold it in that moment?' "

'The Ferndale of the future'

The guerrilla sign artist says he understands growth is inevitable, but it should be happening more slowly.

Bach said the reality is that many of these projects had been in the works for years.

"When the economy is doing well and banks are lending money, that's when you're going to start seeing growth spurts," Bach said. "From history, we know the economy is going to slow down at some point. You can't trickle these things in over the course of time, because the economy won't allow it."

Hicks became director of the Downtown Development Authority in 2015, and it was recently announced that he's leaving the post for a job in Madison Heights. He said it's no mystery that prices are going up in Ferndale, and some turnover is likely as leases come up for renewal.

"Market forces are usually driven by the private sector," he said. "There's not a whole lot we can do to mitigate that."

Coulter said city leaders want to make sure there's "still a place in Ferndale for the people who helped create it. The people who work in the restaurants and the retail stores." He said the real estate market is reminiscent of pre-recession levels.

"If you own a house, it's great news," the mayor said. "If you're trying to come to town or want to stay as a renter, it can be a real challenge."

FerndaleHaus on Nine Mile Road in Ferndale, Thursday, March 7, 2019. Junfu Han, Detroit Free Press

To that end, the city in 2017 passed an ordinance requiring developments of 25 or more residential units to set aside 25 percent for affordable housing, or as the mayor describes it: "housing for people of more moderate income."

It applies to developments that receive any kind of tax incentives from the city or involve city property. But it's only for future developments, so none of the apartments underway would be required — although, if apartments are added to the Development on Troy, it could apply, Coulter said.

As for the mayor's thoughts on "Don't Royal Oak My Ferndale?"

"I get the sentiment that change can be scary for folks," Coulter said. "I didn’t particularly care for it — not because of that sentiment, but I thought it was rude to our neighbors to the north. Royal Oak is full of good people, and it felt insulting, in a way, to them."

Campbell said planning is key.

"You want to avoid risky projects that lead communities to make mistakes that they later regret," he said, adding that Petoskey, where a big hole in the ground can be seen at the western entrance to downtown, is an example of a development gone awry. "The first draft of any development project is usually not the best."

As for the mixed-use buildings in general, Campbell said they've helped make for more compact and walkable cities.

"If a town is worried about the city only being used part of the time of the day, then in general, the mixed-use approach should also bring people to town," Campbell said. "As long as you don't have empty buildings, it'll work."

Years of community engagement preceded the Development on Troy, said Jordan Twardy, director of community and economic development in Ferndale. Office and retail space were preferred over market-rate apartments, in hopes that it will help drive more daytime traffic to the area.

"If you look at the way the DOT is designed, we didn’t want just a prefabricated (parking) deck," he said.

"The dot" mixed-use parking structure is to bring retail and possibly office space to downtown Ferndale at Allen Road and West Troy Street. The rendering was designed by Ferndale-based architecture firm Fusco, Shaffer, & Pappas. City of Ferndale

The Baker College proposal has been especially controversial — with about a dozen people showing up at a recent meeting to voice concerns to City Council. Multiple public meetings have been planned before the end of April, when the city could decide to move forward with it.

"It's really cool to have this kind of engagement," Twardy said. "We want this."

More: Ferndale's busiest parking lot to close for mixed-use development

More: Residents slam Baker College's plans for downtown Ferndale campus

Gentrification can displace long-term residents and business owners who don't own their property and, especially in Ferndale, there's an authenticity at stake.

"But on the other hand, gentrification is good for everything we want," Campbell said, adding that it brings revitalization.

Bach said he's optimistic. "There's so much good going on," he said.

"The Ferndale of the future will still be Ferndale. It's just going to be a little brighter and shinier."

More: How nightlife has changed in Oakland County’s hottest downtowns

Contact Robert Allen on Twitter @rallenMI or rallen@freepress.com.