Downtown Ann Arbor is set to cut the ribbon on its second bike house tomorrow, and the first spots in it are reserved for employees working in city's center. A bike house is a small, secure facility where users can store and access their bicycles, sort of like a locker room for bikes. Renters pay an annual or monthly fee to rent a space in the bike house. Local high-growth tech startups Duo Security and DeepField helped inspire the construction, offering to prepay for reserved spots in the new Ann Ashely Bike House for their employees. Both companies call downtown Ann Arbor home and have been hiring dozens of new employees, mostly young people, over the last year. "We have a lot of young people who tend to bike to work," says Lorne Groe, CFO & COO of DeepField. "The average age of our employees is in the late 20s. Our current space wouldn’t allow us to have bikes in the office. It's also not the best place to have bikes." Other local businesses have jumped on the bandwagon, reserving spaces in the new bike house. "It's not just the tech companies," says Nancy Shore, business services director for getdowntown program. "We also have people who reserve spaces who work at Mighty Good Coffee Roasting Coffee and Workantile." Employees from Thermo Fisher Scientific, Olark and WATS have also signed on to take over spots. The Ann Ashley Bike House is downtown Ann Arbor's second bike house. It is occupying a formerly dead space in the Ann Ashley Parking Structure. Construction was paid for by the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority. The first one was built in the Maynard Parking Structure. Source: Nancy Shore, business services director for getdowntown Writer: Jon Zemke

As with most issues of transportation in Michigan, progress and innovation can be maddeningly slow. Even after six years of studies, plans for a north-south transit Connector in Ann Arbor are still under review. And that's only one piece of our ever-complicated transportation puzzle.

News that a local entrepreneur (Bee Roll) and developer (Stewart Beal) are partnering to expand a popular business in downtown Ypsilanti (Beezy's Cafe) is rightly being celebrated. It's the type of move that passersby would say, "That makes so much sense. Why didn't it happen earlier?" Normally, the problem of filling empty storefront A with growing local business B is a lot easier said than done. Roll and Beal figured out a way to make the numbers add up. "This is what I would call Ypsilanti hustle," Beal says. "We are both going to work really hard to make this work." Beezy's Cafe has become an Ypsilanti institution in the seven years since its opening, serving soups, sandwiches and other delicious food to a growing clientele. Despite its success, finding capital to grow has proven difficult, to put it nicely. (You can read more in-depth writing about those challenges here. Roll recently signed Beezy's Cafe up as one of the early adopters to ZipCap to leverage a $10,000 loan. More on that here.) Last week Beal purchased the former Club Devine building at 21 N Washington St. The vacant structure also happens to be across the street from Beezy's Cafe current home. Beal and Roll plan to expand Beezy's Cafe into 3,000-square-foot of the former Club Devine space later this year or early next year. That space includes a 800-square-foot commercial kitchen, which is four times the size of Beezy's Cafe's current kitchen. It should give Roll ample room to keep up with demand for both her eatery's breakfast, lunch and dinner items, and its catering service. "I just hope to have the kitchen operational so that I can produce food in a little more space," Roll wrote in an email. "That will potentially raise enough revenue to feed the rest of the growth and keep up with existing bills." Roll is paying $2,500 a month for the new space of Beezy's Cafe, which include $30,000 worth of improvements Beal is making to the space and rolling into the rent. That comes to a price per square foot that Beal describes as the minimum a commercial property can charge a business and still maintain its status as a functional property that can make further improvements. Beal adds that he has been talking to Roll for years about her business and knows she was looking at expanding into an adjacent property that required at least $150,000 buildings updates. The problem so many retailers like Roll run into is they see empty storefronts in a dynamic downtown like Ypsilanti and then realize they need tens of thousands of dollars in upgrades that the landlords have no interest in making. "In Ypsilanti the reason buildings are vacant in because the the owners of the buildings don't want to invest in the building to land a tenant," Beal says. The former Club Devine building was move-in ready. Beal says his development team only needs to put down a new floor in an otherwise pristine space. Which is part of the reason why Beal wanted to move a tenant into 21 N Washington right away. For him it makes sense to bring in an popular business like Beezy's Cafe at an affordable price to anchor his new commercial development. Beal is now working to fill the second floor and basement of the 22,000 square foot building. He is considering turning the second floor into either an office space or residential lofts, and hopes to fill it within six months. He knows filling the basement will be more of a challenge and hopes to find the right tenant for it in the not-too-distant future. "She (Roll) brings the fan base and we get the space ready for her to make it work," Beal says. Source: Stewart Beal, owner of Beal Properties; Bee Roll, owner of Beezy's Cafe Writer: Jon Zemke Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.