Dominic McCord walks the same six blocks he walked as a kid, except now he's the one behind the line instead of the one crossing the street for candy. Before he became executive chef at Petty Cash, the building at 20050 Livernois was Oakland Shrimp House, and the corner store across from it is where he spent his allowance growing up. His grandmother lived in the neighborhood. He grew up six blocks down, he told Hour Detroit when the restaurant opened, and coming back to cook on the Avenue of Fashion felt like a homecoming rather than a career move.
That story has been told a few times now, and for good reason. It's the shorthand for what happened to Livernois between 7 Mile and 8 Mile over the past several years: department stores that closed in the '70s and '80s got replaced, block by block, with businesses owned by the people who grew up around them. If you live in Green Acres, you've heard some version of this already, maybe from a neighbor, maybe from the Crain's piece calling the business district thriving. What most of that coverage skips is where the next round of investment is actually headed, and it isn't deeper into the four blocks everyone already photographs.
The Stretch You Already Know
If you've walked the Avenue in the past year, you know the anchors. Kuzzo's Chicken & Waffles still draws a line for its $2 Tuesday specials. Good Cakes and Bakes has been turning out wholesome, organic baked goods since 2013. Baker's Keyboard Lounge, tucked near 8 Mile, holds its reputation as one of the oldest continuously operating jazz clubs in the world.
The newer names have filled in around them. Table No. 2, at 18925 Livernois, opened as what chef Omar Mitchell called Michigan's only Black-owned, white-tablecloth fine-dining restaurant, with Mitchell (who trained under Milos Cihelka at the old Golden Mushroom) serving Wagyu strip steak and tableside bananas Foster to a 70-seat dining room, according to Metro Times. Petty Cash brought a black-and-gold, Motown-themed cocktail bar into a space across from Pembroke Plaza. Art in Motion Ceramic Studio and Gallery moved into a bigger storefront on the Avenue after pottery classes outgrew its original spot. Detroit Dye House opened with a tie-dye studio people can book for classes.
None of this is a secret if you already live three minutes from Livernois. What's worth knowing, if you haven't checked lately, is that Petty Cash has settled into a leaner schedule than it ran at launch: these days it's open Friday through Sunday rather than the full week. That's not a decline story. It's a corridor figuring out its actual rhythm after the ribbon-cutting energy wears off, and it means checking hours before you plan a Tuesday dinner there.
Where the Money Is Actually Going Next
Here's the part that hasn't made it into most of the roundups. In January 2026, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation awarded the city a $4.3 million Michigan Talent Partnership grant for something called the Livernois Streetscape Extension. The project's own name gives away its purpose: connecting campus and community. It's built to extend the corridor's economic reach toward nearby institutions and employment centers, not to add more storefronts between 7 and 8 Mile.
That distinction matters more than it sounds like it should. The original Livernois streetscape project, the one that widened sidewalks to 24 feet and added protected bike lanes, ran from Clarita Street up to 8 Mile Road and wrapped construction by 2020, covering the exact stretch that already runs along Green Acres. Everything since then, the ribbon cuttings, the new restaurant openings, the magazine features, has happened inside that same footprint. The extension grant pushes the work further south, past the blocks Green Acres already touches, toward McNichols and the institutions clustered around it, stitching the corridor into University District's end of Livernois instead of layering more investment onto the same four blocks.
In plain terms, the stretch Green Acres already borders isn't getting neglected, it already has the sidewalks, the lighting, and the bike lanes. What it hasn't had is a matching stretch to walk into once you head south past it. If you've ever noticed the sidewalks and storefronts look sharper up near 8 Mile and thinner out as you head toward McNichols, that's the gap this extension is built to close.
It also lines up with something a longtime observer of the corridor said years before any of this funding existed. Michael Dolphin, director of the Avenue of Fashion Business Association, pointed out that the strip never declined as badly as other parts of the city because it sat next to strong residential neighborhoods, naming Green Acres specifically alongside University District as the reason the Avenue had a floor under it when other corridors didn't. The new extension reads like the city finally building infrastructure toward that same logic instead of just benefiting from it.
The Calendar Has Its Own Rhythm
None of this reads as abstract if you were on Livernois for either of this year's two signature events. Light Up Livernois returned on July 11, produced by IBA Detroit CDC, turning the strip between 8 Mile and 6 Mile into a full day of runway shows, designer showcases, and local boutique pop-ups. Rufus Bartell, the festival's organizer and executive director of IBA Detroit CDC, who is also a founding partner of Petty Cash, put it simply when he said Light Up Livernois is where Detroit's fashion community comes alive, tying the festival back to the Avenue's decades-old identity as a fashion destination rather than treating it as a generic street fair.
Three weeks later, on August 1, Jazz on the Ave took over the same two-mile stretch between 8 Mile and McNichols, hosted by Avenue Community Services with live jazz, classic cars, food trucks, and vendor tables running from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., free to attend. If you missed both, they're annual fixtures rather than one-offs, which means next summer gives you another shot, and the McNichols end of that route is exactly where the streetscape extension money is aimed.
A Few Practical Notes If You're Headed Down There This Fall
- Many shops on the Avenue close Monday and keep shorter hours midweek, so a Tuesday afternoon walk will find more storefronts dark than a Saturday one.
- Street parking is generally available, but it fills up fast during Light Up Livernois and Jazz on the Ave, so arriving early beats circling the block.
- Petty Cash now runs Friday through Sunday only, a shift worth knowing before you plan a weeknight reservation.
- Table No. 2 encourages reservations ahead of weekend service given its smaller dining room.
What This Actually Means If You Live Here
The easy version of this story is the one that's already been written a dozen times: a Detroit corridor came back from the edge, Black-owned businesses filled the storefronts, everyone should be proud. All of that is true, and none of it tells you anything you didn't already sense walking your dog past the Avenue on a Saturday morning.
What's actually changing is the shape of the thing. The next public investment isn't polishing the blocks that already get the magazine spreads. It's extending the corridor's infrastructure toward the institutions and community south of it, closing the gap between the Avenue of Fashion and the neighborhoods, including this one, that kept it alive when the department stores left. Dominic McCord cooking six blocks from where he grew up isn't just a nice detail. It's the pattern the next round of construction is trying to make more common, not less.
That's the kind of block-by-block detail we track because we live and work in these neighborhoods, not because it shows up in a press release. If you're curious what a specific stretch of Green Acres or the surrounding blocks actually looks like right now, from the streets to the storefronts to what's realistically walkable, the team at City Living Detroit can talk it through with you. Schedule a consultation whenever you're ready.
