Business & Tech

Fourth Street Rises: Formerly Rundown Area Coming Alive

Formerly derelict area grows into a creative corridor with artists, architects, film studios and more.

A creative corridor is springing up along a formerly dilapidated section of Fourth Street, an area just a few blocks off the Main Street hub but miles away from its trendy sheen.

Long known for a few tired antique stores sprinkled in with an empty dollar store, abandoned gift shop, shuttered record store and hair salon, Fourth Street is gaining luster.

Creaky antique stores are giving way to trendy boutiques, artist workshops, photo studios, hip graphics companies, film production studios, retail stores for wine and handbags – all located in what used to be dead space between on Troy and on Knowles.

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It's a three-block area sometimes congested with I-75 traffic, but until recently rarely visited by walkers.

That's changing with the addition of places like Jenna Kator Handbags, 324 E. Fourth St., a sleek shop with floor-to-ceiling windows displaying purses named for and inspired by the vibe of different local cities.

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Kator opened her storefront earlier this month after selling her designs online for a year, and she said she couldn't have picked a better location.

"Royal Oak is the center of everything," she said. "The trendsetters are here. This is a great corridor. I feel like we have a collaborative unit."

From graphics to wine to art

Ideation Graphics, 405 E. Fourth St., is next to Avalon Films, 407 E. Fourth St., which has handled everything from Pure Michigan ads to spots for Ford and Chevy, and Carrie Underwood's concert video.

"We love what's going on here," said Jon Moses, creative director of Ideation, a sign and branding graphics company that moved in more than five years ago. "We've done a little bit of work for our neighbors, we're trying to keep it local even down to Fourth Street. It's really cool how Fourth Street is coming alive."

Defrost Design, a graphic communication firm at 327 E. Fourth St., and winery , 325 E. Fourth St., are on the block. The newly located F/X Architecture and the more established , a pottery store and artist studio, are a stone's throw away.

Visitors to the area can visit 323 East, a Fourth Street art gallery and boutique that opened two years ago with an apple green façade and bold, graffiti-covered side walls.

"When we moved in all these buildings around us were vacant, it was just us and an antique store," said Jesse Cory, part owner of 323 East.

Star sightings among vegetarian fare

You can even do some star sighting in the area: Shopkeepers say they see stars from the show Detroit 1-8-7 walk by on their way to vegetarian restaurant for dinner.

 "Michael Imperioli looks in and waves," Kator said.

Luminaries as large as Eminem quietly move in and out of the big film production and photography space at 326 Fourth St., where Radish Creative handles film production, photographer Ken Music shoots products, and visitors rent space for big-named photo and video shoots.

In fact, Music, who owns the 10,000-square foot 326 Fourth building that disappears in plain sight -- with a façade that looks like a garage door -- is happy to show off the spot where Eminem shot a famous spread for Spin magazine to promote his movie 8 Mile.

In the small green backyard of the building is an apartment complex where Eminem struck his pose.

"Sometimes people come by and they want to go back there and take pictures," Music said. "It doesn't bother us."

Music enjoys the history of his building, which was created as a boat storage warehouse in the 1950s and became a photography studio for Chrysler a few years later. He points out the spot where huge, 20-foot-tall garage doors once opened so advertisers and engineers could drive in new models, under cover,  for pre-production photo spreads.

The mammoth garage door has been downscaled for the huge white space with lights and cameras for film production and photo work.

Floor-to-ceiling handbags

Kator is next door with purses spotlighted like jewelry in a storefront with floor to ceiling windows, white walls and floors and black furniture that makes her store look like a SoHo loft.

Purses include a sleek clutch called "The Royal Oak," roomier bags named "The Rochester," "The Birmingham," and "The Petoskey."

Next to her store is Annaliese Custom Framing, 316 E. Fourth St., opened by Analiese  Schnurr  20 years ago and still going strong. Her business bridges old and new in the neighborhood.

"People are coming here from everywhere, Bloomfield Hills, Birmingham," said Schnurr, a former artist who cuts 20 mats or so a week by hand for her customers. "It used to be all antiques and old people, now it's young people."

She remembers when Fourth Street died after the economy sank following 9/11. Now, she's happy to watch the upswing.

"The bottom fell out for a while, people just didn't want to spend money, now I have so much business I could move if I wanted – but I don't want to," she said. "It's so cozy here."


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